Spike lay asleep, a small smile on his face suggesting he was dreaming of an ice-cream-world in which he could save fair maidens and wear aprons. Or, due to dreams being rather erratic nuances of sleep, it could at least be inferred that he was having a good dream.

Above, or rather on top of his sleeping form sat Twilight Sparkle, exploring his lips with her own. Shy brushes had become light pecs, steadily growing in frequency and determination.

Spike furrowed his brow slightly, his adolescent mind rejecting the idea of waking from the pleasant warmth he found himself encompassed by. It was far softer than any blanket and seemed to coil itself around his body as if in an embrace. From the edges of his dream he could smell a faint scent of cinnamon that he likened to the dusty old tomes that lay strewn about his home. The thought of books turned to cleaning and work which made him relish more in the ethereal embrace he found his body in.

As Twilight ventured more and more into her efforts she let her hooves brush themselves onto Spike's cheeks, holding his precious lips where she could get to them. She had been letting her lips linger against his for longer periods of time, stifling small moans in her throat. 'You don't need her', she thought against the electricity that surged through her brain, 'you can let me be all you need.' To her, each kiss was a promise. A promise of a heart, a promise of a home, and a promise of protection; to Twilight, there was nothing wrong with what she was doing.

As Spike steadily rose out of his dreamland, he began to feel his imagined blanket take on a strange and very warm shape. It definitely had a body and arms, and was obviously touching him, but something about the exciting jolts he felt involuntarily flash through his hazy mind felt strange in his current position. However, the scent of books rose to meet him again and his mind quickly justified that the source of the sensations was Twilight.

Her pace increased as her body involuntarily pressed down upon the object of her affections. Twilight had begun to lose herself in the moment as fantasies of kissing a conscious Spike took over her mind. She pulled her lips back for a breath and whispered, "I love you, Spike", before continuing.

'Was that Twilight?' Spike asked himself, 'What could she want? I'm still sleepy.' Spike had stopped dreaming and lay in a semiconscious state from behind closed eyes. As his senses began to ready themselves into action, Spike began to feel the sensations across his body grow clearer. His cheeks twitched against the sensation of a smooth hoof, the mass encircling his body was clearly the body of a pony. There was something else, though, some warmth he couldn't place. The vague taste of unsweetened tea came to him as he tentatively licked at his lips, eliciting a gasp from some unknown source. 'This is getting weird.'

Twilight shot upwards the moment she felt something slender brush across her lips, her eyes were white saucers resting over her burning cheeks. His tongue, Spike's tongue, had passed over her bottom lip. Her gaze locked on Spike lightly smacking his lips as he sleepily furrowed his brow. Millions of questions flooded her mind, threatening her very sanity with the paranoid implications they brought with them. Was he awake the whole time? Did he know? Was what she was doing wrong? More importantly, at least to the flushed unicorn, why did it feel substantially better than anything she had previously done herself?

The dragon beneath her let out a yawn and shifted in her grasp, startling her out of her delusions and sending her crashing to the floor with a yelp. Twilight quickly gathered her senses and looked up to face Spike, rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes. He threw his arms to his side and bent his body upwards in an audible stretch, once his eyes opened he gazed towards her tangled mass beneath him. Twilight's eyes contained shock and worry while Spike's demeanor obviously spoke that he had no knowledge of anything prior to his waking. With an almost quizzical sigh, Spike finally questioned Twilight's position, "Twilight, why are you on the floor?"

Twilight shifted nervously, searching in her mind for a rational explanation. It was a simple task to kiss Spike while he slept, but even facing him after doing so was proving to be arduous. 'Come on, Twilight, think of something', she thought to herself. She shifted her gaze around, physically searching for a plausible reason as to why she had scrambled to the floor until she finally regained eye contact with Spike. He was giving her a quizzical stare from atop the couch, waiting for an answer. In response, Twilight chuckled like a nervous foal and gave him a grin, "Good afternoon, Spike, how did you sleep?"

Spike looked down at his guardian and shrugged, dismissing her actions as one of the many quirks of Twilight Sparkle, "I guess so, but I had a few weird dreams." Spike grumbled a bit and arched his back, another audible pop emanating from it before he continued, "how long have you been up, Twilight?"

Twilight's left eye twitched ever so slightly at the mention of dreams, her intrinsic paranoia bubbling into her consciousness as she glanced hurriedly towards the clock. The minute hand, a lion's claw that descended to it's center point of a certain darconequus, pointed towards the etched "4" on the clock's face while the hour hand, an eagle's claw with a firm grasp on a glass of chocolate milk, remained affixed to the "12". 'Twenty minutes, that's all? I was sure it had been longer than that.' Twilight quickly found herself wondering about the scientific validity of romance novels in regards to time slowing during a kiss until her subconscious returned her eyes to Spike. "Only a little bit, Spike", she said with a little uncertainty. She wasn't lying to him, but part of her wanted to confess what she had been doing. Part of her wanted to tell him what she had said so many times as he slept, so many times throughout their shared lives. 'Only a little bit of me kissing you', she thought as the sensations of her actions flooded her body along with a crimson shade. Twilight looked down towards her hooves, embarrassment and shame filling her until something smooth cupped her cheek. She looked up with a gasp to see Spike in front of her, looking concerned.

"Twilight, you're beet red, what's the matter?" Spike asked as he brought his face closer to hers, intent on knowing if his guardian was alright. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Spike noticed the faint scent of old books and cinnamon. Her cheeks felt hot beneath his claws, but he was always taught that the best way to gauge sickness was through the forehead. He never knew why it worked in that specific way, but he would never question Twilight or her mother whenever they seemed to know what they were talking about.

Twilight couldn't do much other than stutter a few times in response before Spike had unceremoniously pressed his forehead against hers. A quiet tap and a dull pain was quickly overtaken by an amplified amount of sensory input. Her eyes involuntarily closed and her lips parted slightly as her mind went blank. Spike's face was touching hers, his claw was cupping her cheek, and their snouts were mere millimeters apart. She wanted to reach up and grab Spike's cheeks to pull him those few millimeters closer, but her body simply wouldn't comply. Twilight mentally cursed herself for freezing up at her opportune moment.

Once Spike had pressed his head against Twilight's the scent he noticed before became incredibly more noticeable, it was if he had inhaled right as the page of a novel had been turned. The more he smelled it he became all the more distracted from finding out whether Twilight was sick or not. The scent called back everything he had felt before he woke up. Spike closed his eyes, trying desperately to figure out where head felt this before when the taste of unsweetened tea floated to his tongue. The moment Spike placed what he had felt before, everything grew hot. He had felt this whenever he fantasized about Rarity in his dreams, specifically when she would kiss him as a princess would a hero or whenever she would do things he didn't understand when he woke up. 'Was Twilight, no, no that's crazy. She would-'

Spike was jolted out of his innermost thoughts when he felt something smooth press against his spines. He let out a short gasp and felt his eyes shoot open to see Twilight sitting before him, wearing the same expression of shock and embarrassment on her face. The afternoon sun shone in through the library's west window, casting them exclusively in a natural spotlight. Twilight Sparkle sat blushing before her beloved assistant with one hoof gently caressing his cheek with Spike perfectly mirroring her actions and expressions. Dust danced in the air as the two sat in silence, unable to say anything. Twilight found herself staring, not that she cared, into Spike's emerald eyes. Her hoof started to move in gentle ovals alongside his spines as her eyes fluttered slowly. Gradually, she noticed Spike's stunned face drawing closer to hers. Or was she getting closer to him? At this point she honestly couldn't care less, she had recognized she was moving for a kiss, a real kiss this time.

Spike kept telling himself that what was happening was crazy, that there was no chance in a million years that something like this ever would or was supposed to happen, yet he still found himself frozen in place. The closer Twilight moved the more he found his cheeks burning, his eyes darting around the room until they settled on the clock. The moment Spike noticed the time a huge mistake crashed through his psyche. 'Rarity! I was supposed to help her today!' As if forgetting everything that had or was about to happen, Spike turned towards the door with a shout, "Twilight, I've got to go!"

Twilight opened her eyes to see an empty space before her, obviously confused. All she could respond with was a baffled, "Huh?" She was just about to kiss Spike, right? What happened, what had gone wrong? She turned to see Spike practically sprinting for the oaken door leading out into the streets of Ponyville.

Spike had heaved the door, letting in the afternoon's light and heat, quickly yelling back to Twilight, "Rarity asked me to come help her stick a bunch of gems on her dresses yesterday, being the greatest assistant in all of Equestria, I can't let her down!"

Spike was halfway down the porch when a lavender explosion of magic erupted in front of rim to reveal Twilight Sparkle with an expression on her face he couldn't quite place. Seeing her appear before him, along with the sheer force of a teleportation spell, knocked him to his scaly bottom. He looked up, noticeably irritated, questioning her, "Twilight, what in the Equestria was that for?"

'Rarity's', she thought, 'he's going back over there even after he came crying to me.' It would have been a gratuitous lie to say that Twilight didn't hate the thought of Spike leaving the library and completely abandoning the moment the two were readily about to share. However, she couldn't let what she wanted get in the way of keeping her dragon safe, "Spike", she spoke softly, leaning down to his level, "Are you sure about going over there? I just don't want to see you come home crying again, it hurt to see you like that." Keeping calm and gentle was proving to be hard for her as jealousy had no qualms to taking over her thoughts.

Spike sighed and sat up, dusting himself off before he took the time to speak. "Twilight", he said flatly, "I've been through worse, especially for Rarity." He looked up and shrugged, "I've turned into a giant rampaging beast, fought off Diamond Dogs, and stuck needles in my butt. Knowing that I still can't tell her is nothing compared to all the other stuff I do." Spike cracked a bittersweet smile before looking off into the afternoon sky, "And I know I'll be okay because I always have you to come home to." Once he had finished speaking Spike began to walk lazily towards Carousel Boutique with a simple, "Later, Twilight."

Times like this always served to remind Twilight that Spike was only a baby by dragon standards, whenever he spoke like this it tended to make everypony forget he was scared of dual explosions and the paranormal. He was more grown up than Twilight herself was, especially during her pointless mental breakdowns, what was catastrophic tardiness to her was missing Arbor Day to him. He was always around anytime she needed him, staying up well past his limits just to fetch a quill or a bundle of scrolls. Her closest friend, her number one assistant, her dragon.

'And he's walking away.'

"Spike."

The dragon turned around when he heard Twilight call out to him only to be greeted by two lavender hooves on either of his cheeks. Suddenly, without any warning, his lips were met with hers. His eyes shot open as he attempted to pull back, only to be pulled further into the kiss by Twilight. The scent of old books flooded his nostrils even after Twilight pulled back from him. The warmth, the scent, even the taste of tea on his lips, all of it made sense! Electricity surged through his body, making every scale across his being feel separate from the other. It felt good, but he didn't know if it felt right. Spike had to know, had to understand why Twilight would kiss him like that. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a single whisper, "Twilight." He looked up only to see her turn around and head back into the Library.

Before she went through the open doorway, Twilight spoke to Spike without turning around. "Have fun at Rarity's, Spike", she said with a noticeable quiver in her voice that seemed a mix of giddiness and sorrow, "I'll be home for you when you need me.

That was that, the door closed and Twilight went back inside, leaving Spike alone on the path leading to the library. Spike's heart was pounding in his chest and the taste of unsweetened tea wouldn't leave his mouth.