Author's Notes:

You know, I don't know why I always imagine the cupcakes being huge. They're not huge.

But for some reason I always imagine they are.

The day got better after that, at least in Arthur’s opinion, which is just another way of saying it got quieter.

All of ATC’s bodies had been left at the site overnight on standby so the Governing Intelligence was there before Arthur was, technically, and they could get started on some of the more technical particulars before the pony workcrew arrived, at which point actual work began.

Arthur almost forgot what it was that had started his day off on such a sour note, at least up until he was just about through checking off a list when ATC came up behind him and cleared its throat to get his attention.

He knew it was ATC doing this because it always did it in the exact same way, specifically because it knew that this annoyed Arthur in a low-key way, him finding the idea of something without a throat going through the trouble of pretending to have one just to pretend to clear it irritating on some very basic level.

“Yes?” Arthur asked without looking, focusing on counting and ticking off the last few items so as not to lose his place.

“Isn’t it nearly lunchtime?” ATC asked.

Arthur stopped, pen poised over the very last box. He then checked it and turned, finding the body just standing there, innocent as anything.

“What? Why are you asking me?”

“Just thought I’d check,” ATC said, again all innocent.

“You have an internal clock, why-” Arthur said and that was about as far as he got before ATC took a sharp step sideways and revealed who had been standing behind it. Arthur’s eyes dropped down.

“Oh. Oh, hi. Hello again Baker’s Dozen. Uh...is it lunchtime?” He said, finding himself pinned to the spot by a happily smiling pony beaming up at him.

“Yes!” She said brightly, but then doubt set in. “I mean, it’s the time you usually have lunch. But if you’re still busy I can - I can come back! Or go. I don’t mind.”

“No, no you don’t have to go, it’s fine. It’s about the right time. Why, um - why are you here?” He asked, noting that she didn’t have any bags with her and so she wasn’t here to deliver another cake.

He was slightly relieved by this. As delicious as it had been (and it had been delicious) he still hadn;t finished the first one, and he was only human.

Baker’s Dozen didn’t seem to mind having her motives questioned.

“I was just passing and I thought if you were on lunch maybe you’d have time to talk?”

Arthur blinked at her. This answer was baffling.

“Um, sure. Sure. I have time, probably. Uh, ATC, how long is the maximum allowable length of time for a lunch break?” He asked, looking to the body still standing nearby.

Arthur typically ate whatever he brought in under five minutes and returned to work, so how long he was meant to take was a mystery to him.

ATC shrugged, or at least the present body did.

“You’re the boss, you can take a long lunch if you want, what am I going to do about it? I’ve got things there. Anything comes up I’ll tell you about it,” it said. Which wasn’t really an actual answer to the question that Arthur had asked, so Arthur frowned.

“Are you honestly trying to get me to skive, ATC?” He asked.

“I am trying to get you to be happier. Seriously. It’s kind of our thing. Go, go. You’re not required for this bit anyway, go. It’ll be fine,” the Governing Intelligence said, shooing Arthur off.

This still felt like rule-breaking to Arthur but, wilting beneath the attentions of both the clearly-eager Baker’s Dozen and the willing-to-cover-for-him ATC Arthur folded. If he didn’t take too long he probably wouldn’t be going over the maximum time anyway, he told himself.

“Alright,” he said, chewing on his lip and glancing down to Baker’s Dozen. “Let’s - let’s go over here.”

Not far away from where he was working was a small park. Canterlot, Arthur had seen, was lousy with such nooks and crannies and green spaces, though up until right this moment - right this moment when he was going into one such nook and/or cranny - he had never made any personal use of them.

They settled on a tucked-away bench in a quiet spot and sat a comfortable distance from one another. Arthur, mostly for something to do with his hands, actually did take his lunch out of his bag, which he’d taken with him for comfort purposes. His lunch was in a tiny pot. He took the lid off the tiny pot.

He was so used to eating his lunch on his own that he found having company kind of threw him off, and he’d entirely forgotten what it was he was meant to do. His little pot of standard nutrient slop (not it’s official name) sat on his lap, untouched. Baker’s Dozen peered at it, and her curiosity won out over her good sense.

“Can I try some?” She asked.

“What? Oh, right. Sure,” Arthur said.

Confusion over how she was meant to actually get at it followed. The pot was small, so just sticking her muzzle in would probably have been rude. Indeed, sticking just about any part of your body into someone’s lunch is typically rude, so no tongues and hooves were out as well. Even if her hooves might have fitted. Which they wouldn’t have.

Arthur, seeing her struggling, faffed to try and assist and the two of them fumbled awkwardly for a few seconds before, eventually, Arthur managed to settle on getting some of his lunch onto his spoon and then feeding her himself. This was a nerve-wracking experience.

“Thank you,” she said.

“S’okay,” Arthur mumbled, unsure of where to put the spoon. Baker’s Dozen meanwhile was focusing on his lunch.

She might have expected flavour or texture or any of those other things that you commonly associate with food. But that was not what Arthur’s lunch had been designed for. Arthur’s lunch was the baseline on which those things could be mounted.

Its purpose was to keep you from starving to death - everything else after that, such as making it enjoyable to consume, was up to you. Arthur just never bothered with any of that. Well, almost never. On special occasions (read: sometimes, randomly) he would crush one of the crawler's crackers into it. Just because he could. But not too often, lest he get used to such extravagence.

Baker’s Dozen was now experiencing the baseline.

“It’s...filling?” She said at length and after swallowing.

“Yes,” said Arthur.

Couldn’t really argue with that. That was, after all, the whole point.

She did not go in for seconds. Arthur, not that hungry, put the lid back on.

“Did you eat the cupcake?” Baker’s Dozen then asked. Arthur nodded.

“I did,” he said.

A positive development! At least as far as Baker’s Dozen was concerned. She perked up immediately.

“Did you like it?” She asked and against Arthur nodded.

“I liked it. I haven’t eaten all of it yet but, uh, I will. There was a lot. For me. It was good though. Really good.”

By Arthur’s standards this was positively effusive. He even managed something approximating what he remembered a smile to look like. Baker’s Dozen was, again, beaming ear-to-ear. It was quite something to see.

“Great! I could mak- could, uh, get you another, if you liked?”

“I, um, Baker’s Dozen - you really don’t have to worry about that. Really,” he said, then her near slip-up caught his brain and he thought back to what Corin had said, too, and so felt compelled to ask: “Did you really make it?”

Unwilling to straight-up lie, Baker’s Dozen squirmed a bit on the bench and for one of the first times so far failed to meet his eye.

“Well, yes…”

“For me?” Arthur pressed.

“Well, um, I-I suppose it was made with you in mind…”

Not for the first time in his interactions with her Arthur was baffled.

“Why?”

This was such an unusual question for Baker’s Dozen she wasn’t completely sure on where to start with answering it. Her turn to be baffled, apparently. To her it just seemed obvious.

“You just always look so, well, sad. And I don’t like it when anypony - er, sorry, heh - looks sad and cakes always cheer me up so, well, uh…”

Cakes were, to Baker’s Dozen, something of a universal language. There was a lot of ways to make mistakes when opening up to strangers, but opening up with a cake really narrowed down those ways, at least in her experience. And if someone rejected cake? That kind of said all that needed to be said, in which case.

So far it had never happened.

Arthur frowned, moving from baffled to bemused.

“You wanted to cheer me up?” He asked.

“Did it work?” She asked brightly, entirely knocking the wind out of him.

Couldn’t really deny it.

“...yes,” he said.

Not that he’d been feeling bad, per se, Arthur never felt bad. But he did have to admit, even to himself, that when he’d been sat in the crawler the previous night, when he’d cut out a slice of that cake and actually sat down and taken the time to eat it - when he’d done that - he had to admit…

He’d liked it.

And sitting there eating it, he’d thought about Baker’s Dozen, and how happy she’d been in giving the thing to him in the first place, and it had made him like it a lot more, somehow.

For her part, Baker’s Dozen’s face had lit up on hearing him say this.

“I’m glad!” She said.

Arthur actually had to look away her expression was so cheerful. It touched her whole face. It was kind of overwhelming.

“Thank you. I haven’t had any cake in a very long time,” he said.

The conversation faltered awkwardly here as Arthur didn’t know how to follow up what he’d said and Baker’s Dozen wasn’t sure what to say in response to it. So neither of them said anything for a bit.

“Do you like it here?” Baker’s Dozen asked, deciding to take things in a different direction, much to Arthur’s immense relief. The silence had been crushing, even if it hadn’t lasted especially long in the grand scheme of things.

For a split-second he thought she meant whether he liked it in the little nook they were sitting in and for that split-second he was quite confused why she would ask. Then it clicked that she meant it in a more general sense, and Arthur was once again reminded how out of practise he was in actually talking to people.

Corin didn’t count. She was a work associate.

“Haven’t been out a lot but what I’ve seen is - it seems nice. Quiet. Quiet is good. How do you, uh, like it here?” He asked.

This was a very silly question for him to have asked, he felt, but it had just slipped out. Thankfully Baker’s Dozen rolled with the question and answered it in probably the best way she had available:

“Canterlot took some getting used to. Much busier than where I grew up, lots more ponies around. But I like that. Makes it feel lively! Always something going on. Even before you arrived, heh,” she said, rushing to add: “Not you you, I mean, uh, but, you know, humans. But you too. You’re something that’s going on. Somepony, I mean. Er, someone. Heh.”

Arthur had actually managed, quite without noticing, to keep eye-contact with her throughout all of that. Indeed, it was likely part of the reason she’d started coming apart a bit towards the end. It was only once she’d wrapped up and capped it off with a smile that he realised, and his cheeks burned.

This was all very odd. Not unpleasant, just unusual.

“Lively is good,” he said, even if he personally didn’t agree. He could understand the appeal in theory. That, and if she thought it was good then it probably was. She seemed to know what was up. She seemed quite nice, all told.

“Should - should you get back to work?” Baker’s Dozen then asked. Arthur checked his watched but all it told him was the time.

“Um, probably,” he said.

“Right. It’s important, isn’t it? I probably shouldn’t distract you.”

“You’re not distracting me, you’re - uh - I don’t mind. It’s nice. Lunch is better this way,” he said, haltingly, making it up completely as he went along. Baker’s Dozen seemed to appreciate it at least, much to Arthur’s relief.

“See you tomorrow?” She asked, slipping off the bench.

“Yes,” Arthur blurted immediately. He then swallowed.

His stomach was far too full of butterflies to accommodate anything else at that moment.