Something was tickling her. That was the first thing that registered to Sunset’s groggy mind as she surfaced from a thankfully dreamless sleep, the sense of something light brushing along the skin of her collarbone. The second was that she was warm, and her arms were wrapped around the source of the warmth, holding it close to her. With the same muzzy-headed, half unconscious state that she greeted most mornings, Sunset pried her eyes open, wincing at how gummy and gross they felt this morning. She resolved to wash her face first thing when she got out of bed.

That plan was put on hold almost immediately at the sight that greeted her blurry vision. Twilight, snuggled up against her, head resting on Sunset’s chest, lavender fingers idly tracing patterns where Sunset’s shirt neck had slipped to expose her collarbone, a dreamy smile on her face as she sleepily murmured more star facts to herself. Sunset relaxed back into the pillows, feeling her own smile creep onto her face, watching and listening quietly to her companion, not wanting to disturb her just yet.

One hand shifted slowly, and with gentle affection she began to scratch her nails lightly up and down Twilight’s back, watching as the dark haired head tilted to meet her eyes. “Hey,” she breathed, kissing the end of Twilight’s nose.

Her girlfriend let out a contented sigh, wriggling a little under the touch on her back. “Morning, Sunny...you sound like you’re feeling better.” The hand on Sunset’s collar stilled, palm resting against the exposed skin. “Did I wake you?”

“Not really—I was already waking up.” She nuzzled her nose into dark hair, breathing deeply. “It was a nice way to wake up...makes me wish I could wake up like this more than once a week. It feels...good.”

Twilight made a soft noise of agreement, worming her arms around Sunset and hugging herself tightly to the redhead’s body. “Saturday always feels like the best day of the week…waking up with you, with nothing on my schedule but spending time with you.”

Sunset fell silent, content to continue the light scratching movements of her fingers and occasionally pressing kisses to the top of Twilight’s head. The nightmare that had addled her wits so badly the night before seemed far removed from the little pocket of happiness that existed under the warm blankets with the smaller body curled snug to hers. “Well, lucky for us, my own schedule is completely empty today…though next Saturday night, I do have plans.”

Purple eyes tilted up quizzically at her. “You do?”

“Mm. The sleepover at New Years was a hit, so the girls want to try doing one or two a month. I told them I was free on Saturday nights, but that I had a commitment on Fridays.” She brushed her knuckles against a lavender skinned cheek. “Fridays are here, with you, and I refuse to give that up, even for my friends.”

Another of those soft smiles was directed at her, making Sunset’s heart beat just a little faster. “I like our Friday nights just the way they are too—I can’t imagine anything that I could find to be more important than spending time with you,” Twilight agreed, her eyes bright. “It’s a time set aside just for us, and I look forward to it every week.” Her face twisted into a pout that Sunset couldn’t help but find both endearing and amusing. “…It was one of the worst things about being out of town—the whole thing disrupted our schedule and I didn’t get to see you when I should have.”

“I’m here now,” she pointed out, “and if you want, I could stay tonight too? Make up for the day we missed? Besides…you’re behind on your self defense, and I still haven’t heard about how the rest of your New Years went. Or told you about mine.”

The younger girl’s smile brightened even further at the suggestion. “I’d like that. With…everything that happened yesterday, I feel like we got cheated out of the evening we were both looking forward to.” The smile dropped off, her eyes darkening with worry and the reminder of how things had gone the night before for both of them.

“Sparky,” Sunset coaxed, tipping her chin up so she could make sure she had Twilight’s full attention. “…Things didn’t go the way we wanted yesterday, but we weren’t cheated. We were still here, together…and more than that…” she chewed on her lip, trying to find the words. “…you needed me and I needed you in the exact ways we were there for each other yesterday. Just like that first night, or when neither of us was sleeping well before. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that that was important, just as important as any happy moments we’ve spent together.”

Twilight leaned the rest of the distance needed to close the gap between them, her lips finding Sunset’s and kissing her. The redhead pressed back hungrily, one hand tangling up in the loose dark hair and holding them together until they ran out of air. Even then, Twilight stayed close, resting her forehead to Sunset’s while they both caught their breath. When she had, she pecked Sunset’s lips with a lighter, shorter kiss. "Thank you for being there for me yesterday—I’m not sure I can fully articulate just how much I needed you... And...thank you for letting me be there for you last night, Sunset." There was that soft expression again, her lips turning up into the hint of a shy smile. "It felt good to be able to help you, the way you've helped me so often."

The former unicorn could feel her own expression matching her girlfriend’s, unable to resist the feelings that made her lips tug upwards at the corners. “…I…I trust you. More than I’ve trusted anyone in a long time. I…haven’t had any…one…I could trust like that since I was…very small.” Faint memories of warm alabaster wings and soft fur tickled her memory, as did the notes of a lullaby that would never leave her unmoved, and she shook it off, taking a deep breath to get out what she needed to. “…Besides…I needed to know you were safe and sound last night.”

Her girlfriend’s hands tightened on her, almost fiercely, and Sunset could feel the way tension seemed to instantly thrum in every muscle, "So did I." Her voice was quiet, almost too low for Sunset to hear, and Twilight tucked her face into her neck, while they clung together. “You were late, and you were supposed to be early and...I was already having a panic attack, so my brain made it worse. You were late and hadn’t called or texted, so I just knew something bad had happened. It was all I could hear or see, and even though I know now it was all in my head...it was so real. I was convinced that you’d had an accident with your bike, that you were hurt somehow and that you must be in a hospital somewhere where they didn’t know to contact me or mom or dad.”

Sunset’s heart clenched as Twilight rambled against her throat, and she hugged her tighter, pressing her cheek to the top of that dark haired head, already humming a few notes of Celestia’s lullaby to help sooth her. “I ran into awful traffic, and I picked you up a surprise from the bakery,” she explained. “Your mom put it in the fridge so we can enjoy it later.”

“I know that now,” Twilight sighed. “But I don’t always thing rationally when I’m in the state you saw yesterday. My brain decided that because you were late, something bad had kept you away and it went right to a worst case scenario, until I really believed you were hurt and alone and couldn’t tell anyone who to call for you. It terrified me...and it still does...the thought of you needing me and me not being there.”

Twilight sounded so small, so worried and upset that Sunset felt compelled to do something, anything to make her feel better. For a minute she hummed lightly, gathering her thoughts, still holding the other girl in a tight embrace. At last she cleared her throat. “I don’t like that either—I want to be here for you when you need me too. What if we set up a system of some kind for emergencies?” A brief memory intruded, of her vice principal’s request from the beginning of the week. “Actually, I needed to talk to your mom about a sort of ‘in case of emergencies’ thing. Do you think she’d be willing to be put down as my emergency contact at school—my vice principal put two and two together and realized the answering machine for my landline has no adults on the other end and asked me to find someone I trust to be listed on the file instead.”

The former unicorn found herself pushed into the mattress in a mildly uncomfortable way when Twilight used her as leverage to sit up, already taking her words and running with them. “Yes! I’m sure she would be totally okay with that—and we could give you the whole family’s phone numbers so they can be in your phone too in case of emergencies, and you’ll have plenty of people you can get ahold of, no matter what happens. And if we give everyone your number too, someone can always get a hold of you if we have an emergency too.”

A good natured chuckle escaped Sunset; Twilight was rambling again, but it was the good kind of rambling, where she was enjoying planning out the solution to a problem in the most logical and efficient way....and despite the way she had a knee digging into her stomach unpleasantly, it soothed her nerves to see Twilight start to relax. If it made her girlfriend happy to plan the best way to exchange emergency contact information, then Sunset Shimmer would be more than happy to oblige.

“...I think that would work best. We can go ask right now and—”

And that was her cue to intervene on the runaway Twilight Sparkle Thought Train. “Sparky,” she interrupted firmly, reaching up to curl her fingers around hands that had started gesticulating wildly, bringing them to her lips to kiss the knuckles. “I’m happy to see you happy, and we can absolutely do this, but you need to breathe, and before we go pestering your parents, we should at least get up, get dressed, and get something to eat. It has to be after noon, and even if your knee wasn’t helping, I’m fairly certain my stomach is chewing on my backbone.”

Twilight halted mid-sentence, blinking down at Sunset in momentary confusion before her perception of reality reengaged. The redhead could tell the exact moment her girlfriend realized how she was half kneeling on Sunset: purple eyes went wide and her face darkened with a blush. “Oh!” She scrambled to move off Sunset, an uncoordinated rush that inadvertently caught the bottom of the oversized shirt Sunset had worn to bed, the movement tugging it up enough that the former unicorn felt cool air ghost over her stomach and breasts.

A strangled squeak preceded Twilight almost falling off the bed after that, and if she’d been blushing before, her face was now so flushed that Sunset was afraid she was going to combust. One amber skinned hand darted out to catch Twilight by the back of the shirt and keep her on the bed, the other tugging her own shirt back down, all while Sunset tried to ignore the heat in her cheeks. “Careful!” she managed, deciding to pretend nothing had happened before easing Twilight back to a steadier position. “No falling on your head, nerd. A concussion would definitely interfere with our plans today.”

“I’m sorry, Sunset! I didn’t realize I was sitting on you like that and I never meant to pull your shirt up either. I wouldn’t do that to you—not unless you told me it was okay...not that I don’t want to see your body...I very much would enjoy it, because I find you to be incredibly attractive, and that’s with your clothes on...”

Sunset’s heart skipped, and the heat in her cheeks and ears crept down into her core. “Sparky...” she tried to interrupt.

“...I mean, I’d imagined you more than once because you don’t wear a bra to bed, but the numbers and equations don’t do any justice to the real thing, especially because it’s like they defy gravity, which by all the laws of physics should be impossible, but I’ve run the numbers a dozen times...”

Wait, what? The former unicorn swallowed hard, trying to push down the feelings that Twilight’s rambling was stirring up, a hot, raw hunger that was starting to eclipse the one in her stomach. “Twilight...”

Still the other girl kept rambling, barely even seeming to register that Sunset was talking to her. Her hands had joined in her never ending stream of consciousness, gesturing and making repetitive motions. “...can’t help how I respond to you, and I’m so sorry if it makes you uncomfortable and I swear I am not trying to do anything you aren’t ready for or comfortable with—”

“Twilight,” she broke in with extreme firmness, finally breaking through and halting the words before one of them did something they would both regret later. “It’s fine....but we have things we need to do. We can talk about this later.” She wasn’t sure if she could handle it later any better than now, but it was all she could think of to override Twilight’s babbling. “Right now you need to go shower, nerd, or we’re going to be here all day.”

She practically had to shove her girlfriend towards the door, repeating the instructions to shower several more times before Twilight finally left, closing the door behind her. Rather than getting dressed right away, the former unicorn flopped back onto the pillows, a whimpering groan escaping before she could stop it. Her magic fluttered defiantly against her iron willed grip, the impending surge prevented by sheer stubborn determination....but more than that her body ached, responding to the desire in purple eyes, the hints of longing in Twilight’s voice, to a thousand little signals and cues that, impossibly, both her native instincts and her human body understood on a primal level.

It wasn’t as much of a shock to her system as that afternoon a few weeks back had been, but it was still too much all at once, and she laid there, trying to rein in the very visceral, physical—sexual, she forced herself to admit in the privacy of her own mind—response to Twilight, wondering faintly if she’d survive her own body long enough to decide what she was going to do...

The thoughts wouldn’t stop.

Images, some memory, some supplied by her imagination, some recreated from half remembered dreams, flitted across the forefront of her mind, and nothing she tried was working to stop them.

Having already stripped out of her pajamas, Twilight Sparkle changed her shower settings after a moment of internal debate, forgoing her normal, soft patterned, comfortably-warm-but-not-too-hot-or-cold temperature in favor of leaving it ice cold and twisting the dial to make the water rain down on an aggressive massage setting. She practically jumped into the spray, wincing as the needle-like stabs of icy water felt like daggers against her skin, rubbing her senses all wrong and making her feel like she was being assaulted with a wire brush. Yet she stayed, the sound of the water digging into her ears painfully at a frequency that always felt as though her very teeth were itching, hoping that the sensory overload would help her get rid of the heat that coursed through her and made her legs tremble.

Still the images plagued her, how she’d nearly torn Sunset’s shirt after kneeling on her like that, of the forbidden sight, once again, of round breasts and that toned, flat stomach. It was enough to make her thoughts wander, wondering before she could stop herself how it would feel to have Sunset return the favor, to be the one sprawled on the bed with the beautiful redhead straddling her, those long fingered hands pinning hers over her head while she—

The sound of the involuntary moan echoing in the shower brought her out of the fantasy, and Twilight stuck her burning face into the painful spray of water, wincing when it rubbed her senses raw, trying to scour everything away. She had to stop this...it was wrong and insensitive and so very inappropriate when her girlfriend had already established boundaries with her.

Twilight subjected herself to several more minutes of the water based torment, but the heat in her center only burned hotter, and the images became more and more elaborate, digging deeper into her fantasies and private desires to parade them before her mind’s eye. With a resigned sigh, she switched the shower back to her preferred settings, intent on finishing washing up quickly instead so she wouldn’t be so tempted to do something about the ache she was feeling. There was no point in torturing her nerve endings with cold water when her body had just proven the myth about cold showers to be just that.

The actions were rote, mechanical. Body wash squeezed into the wet cloth, the exact same sized dollop as she used every day, then the cloth folded over on itself to work the soap into a lather. The scent of summer flowers, the scrubbing motions as she ran it over her shoulders and neck. All familiar, with all the comfort she took from routine and pattern.

But then the washcloth moved across one breast, catching her nipple with the edge of the soapy fabric, and the jolt of sensation that went through her was a live wire straight down to her core. Another moan escaped her, swallowed up by the white noise of the shower, and unable to resist, she repeated the motion, trying to keep herself quiet.

Twilight was torn—her body begged for physical release, but doing this under current circumstances made her feel guilty and shamed. She tried to push down the urge, telling herself it was being caused by teen hormones in flux, trying to focus her scattered thoughts on washing and not on Sunset Shimmer.

She failed, spectacularly, her mind supplying her with a vision of Sunset in the shower with her, completely nude and staring at her with hungry eyes.

“Sparky...” the way Sunset would growl out her nickname, her voice husky the way it sometimes got when she was half asleep or when she had kissed Twilight breathless…it made her shiver, wanting to hear more...

Sunset’s confident steps towards her, hips moving in a gait that was like a predatory animal, graceful and dangerous and beautiful all at once, until Twilight was backed against the shower wall...

Her own hands, rubbing a soapy cloth over her torso, faded away, replaced by her girlfriend’s, ghosting over damp flesh teasingly, driving her mad until she reacted...only to then have those same wonderful hands holding her fast while she arched and writhed against the sexy, gorgeous body...

“...Sunny...” the name escaped her in a soft whine, a begging sound that somehow managed to encapsulate all of the things she was feeling...

The want for that toned thigh pressed against her where it would do the most good, while Sunny, her Sunny, kissed and bit and sucked on her neck, her ear, her shoulder...

Lost in daydream and fantasy, Twilight didn’t expect to be suddenly swept up in a burst of mind-numbing pleasure, the kind that left her disoriented and shaking. Time lost meaning, as did everything else, only distantly registering the sound of her own voice crying out for Sunset and the way the hot water was suddenly colder than her skin.

Panting, Twilight managed to catch herself on the shower wall before her legs could give out, rapidly blinking away water—and spots—from her eyes. It took a moment to register what had just happened, what she had just done, and she glanced anxiously towards the bathroom door, praying no one had heard her.

Sunset groaned, pressing Twilight’s pillow over her face to muffle the sound—a good idea in theory, but a mistake in practice as her nostrils were flooded with Twilight’s scent. Her magic pushed against her control again, desperate to get away from her, to react to her body’s reaction, to do something without her active consent, and the unicorn-turned-human fought to keep it under control. It was like being a small foal all over again, she realized, with her magic eager to react to any large emotional stimulus....except for her, it had always happened with her negative emotions, like anger and fear, and never when she was happy. Now it seemed to be the complete opposite—as upset as she had been the night before, or as angry as she seemed to feel some days, her magic barely reacted. Instead, it was if her own surges had somehow become bound by the principles behind “Friendship Magic” and the power of the Elements that the girls used, even though she herself wasn’t one of them.

Every nerve ending felt hyper-sensitive, and she could feel the very fibers of her shirt and pants rubbing against her skin with each movement, each breath. Her magic coiled just under her skin, concentrating in the center of her forehead. It wanted a horn, needed a horn to channel outward, and even she knew she couldn’t bleed it off without the familiar spiral. Sunset had to do something…her bones were burning again, aching as fiercely as her core, and she felt like she was about to burst if she didn’t get rid of the excess power.

In desperation and with sensations in her body towing a weird line between pleasure and agony, she started humming, giving what focus she had left to drawing on her feelings for the girls who were her friends, and on the girl down the hall who meant more to her than anyone in two worlds ever had. At first, it seemed to do nothing, and the former unicorn felt ridiculous, but just as she was about to stop, the feeling of the magic changing her body hit her. It was almost a relief, the way it drew on her inner reserves to happen, bringing that unbearable sensation of being an over-filled container ready to rupture down a few notches.

Tearing the pillow away from her face, Sunset tried to guide the magic through her horn, focusing on expelling it harmlessly into earth below her. It fought her, ripping free of her and pulsing outward beyond her control, but the explosive reaction she was expecting never happened. Just heat and light, and the feeling of being strangely spent when it was over, her transformation fading away.

Sunset lay, staring up at her girlfriend’s ceiling for a time, trying to calm her racing heart and put herself back together. Her bones still ached, and her body still tingled with desire, but compared to the feeling of her magic trying to rip free, those things could barely be considered more than minor discomfort. She rubbed her face and blinked back the faint burn of tears wanting to form. There had to be a better way to deal with this...

Shaking fingers yanked her clothes on, fumbling to get a grip on the fabric, struggling against the lingering dampness on her skin. Twilight tried to calm her racing mind, wanting nothing more than to dispel the lingering thoughts that she was sure were responsible for the feeling of a flush on her cheeks, guilt and shame feeding into her anxiety.

What was wrong with her? How could she have done that, after how awful the last twenty four hours had been? Sunset needed her support to recover from an awful night, and here she was, having...

Her mind twisted away from completing the thought, unable to articulate, even to herself, the depth of what she had done. Even attempting to be hyper-rational was impossible, because it didn’t make her feel any less terrible about it, for all it might be ‘normal,’ and a ‘result of hormones.’ It still wasn’t right, not when Sunset was as stressed and upset as she had been, and right in the next room. Not to mention just how badly she had been affected by such a short event—an accidental few seconds of seeing exposed skin, and Twilight had been unable to control herself! How was she supposed to be able to respect her girlfriend’s wishes and boundaries if something so small turned her into little more than an animal?

The guilt increased tenfold as an errant question crossed her mind...one about consent. Did it count in a situation like this as not having consent? Twilight bit her lip, hard, worrying at it with her teeth as she debated the question internally, thinking back to the conversations she had had with Cadence about the importance of consent in any kind of intimacy, but especially sexual intimacy. Her sister-figure had always stressed the concept, how communication about it was a two way street....

“If it’s ever in doubt, Ladybug,” Cady had told her, “imagine how you might feel if the situation were reversed...”

The dark haired girl dried her hair briskly, going through her daily routine at the sink to help give her something to do that was at least familiar, even as her mind conjured thoughts of Sunset, in bed or on her couch, her hands wandering her own body to fantasies of Twilight, fingers—

She jerked herself out of those thoughts quickly when renewed want made her body tingle, and her cheeks burned. That wasn’t going to work, she decided, not when her outrage was nonexistent in favor of much more powerful feelings. She would never tell anyone out loud, but she could admit to herself that she would give Sunset permission without a second thought to indulge as much as she wanted in creating sensual fantasies where Twilight catered to every desire the other girl might have.

However, that didn’t make it okay in the other direction, she decided. It...felt wrong...like she was objectifying her best friend, using her without permission to satisfy baser urges. Twilight felt awful, her eyes starting to burn and her throat feeling tight, ashamed at her own behavior.

She hurriedly blew her nose and splashed water on her face—the last thing the dark haired girl wanted was to go back to Sunset looking like she was upset. Her girlfriend would want to know what had happened and she wasn’t sure she was ready to explain her shower episode to Sunset. “I’ll ask Cadence for advice,” she whispered to herself, squashing the embarrassment that came with the words. “I’ve told her worse, and I won’t have to go into detail. I can stick to facts, get her thoughts on how to handle this situation.” ...Not that she could think of anything worse at the moment—though the time she’d found the box of condoms that had fallen out of Shining’s bag when she was nine was pretty up there. That had been pretty embarrassing all the way around, for everyone involved. Especially because her inquisitive nine year old self had been caught reading the box out loud as she tried to decipher what the “weird balloons” were for.

Twilight shook her head to clear it. Focus, Twilight. Embarrassing memories could wait. She had to make herself presentable in order to not worry Sunset or make her uncomfortable, at least until the raging of teenage hormones settled back to their normal levels and she didnt have to worry about making the weekend worse than it had already been.

“I can do this,” she told her reflection, squaring her shoulders.

Well. That got steamy, didnt it? Poor Twilight finding out that cold showers do not work as effectively as people would have you believe.

And the guilty aftermath, of course, is no fun.

Seems our girls need to sort a lot of things out between them. Before they both combust.

And, because I know not everyone reads the blogs, I’m just letting everyone know I went and got a Ko-fi, to put out a Tip Jar for my work. As I said in the blog, its exactly what it says on the tin. A tip jar. Not required, and I wont be holding the story hostage.

See yall next week!!