Fluttershy took a moment to consider her surrounds as her eyelids jolted open. She was used to the only sound in the morning being the gentle lull of her alarm clock – right now, she could hear the clink of pots and pans from the kitchen. The simple clanging made her panic, not because it was particularly worrying, but because it was new, and unusual. Nopony else was supposed to be there.

        With sudden remembrance, before her brain could catch up with her body’s reaction, Fluttershy gasped and turned her head sideways. The indent in the mattress and shuffled off blankets showed her that she was alone in her bed again.

        The clanking of pans stopped.

        “Fluttershy? Are you awake?”

        Rainbow Dash’s voice sounded farther away than it should have from just the next room over, as though it was travelling through a tunnel or narrow tube.

        Or inside a cupboard filled with pots and pans.

        “Um,” Fluttershy said. She contemplated the question for a moment. She was awake, though still collecting her bearings. She tried to revisit the blurred together happenstance of the previous night, only vaguely remembering why Rainbow Dash had spent the night in her bed and was now in her kitchen.

        Why she had spent the night in the bed–or what had happened there.

        Fluttershy felt a wave of blush creep across her face as she remembered. She pulled the blanket slowly up to her chin with one hoof, and gently laid the other one on her lips. She pressed down softly, as though she expected something to be there as evidence of what had happened.

        Her lips felt just a little tender, but nothing more.

        The crashing of pans came again, louder. Rainbow Dash sounded like she was reorganizing the entire kitchen, making every effort to slam the metal containers about as much as possible.

        Fluttershy blinked from behind her half-mask of blankets as Rainbow Dash’s multicoloured mane crept into view through the kitchen doorway, followed by the rest of her face. Eventually the top half of her body peeked out at Fluttershy from around the corner.

        Rainbow Dash looked unusually frazzled. Fluttershy couldn’t be sure if the displaced strands of hair and bags under Rainbow Dash’s eyes were normal by-products of her sleep before she had a chance to put herself together, but it made her friend look startlingly uncomposed for a pegasus who was usually so cool and collected.

        Rainbow Dash balked slightly and grinned in acknowledgement of her dire need of a shower and a hairbrush.

        “I hope I didn’t wake you up... I was trying to find where you keep the blender and smoothie stuff.”

        “Smoothie... stuff?” Fluttershy asked curiously. She still held the blanket above the bottom of her face like  a shield, letting just her eyes and unreasonably well-kept mane into Rainbow’s eyesight from the doorway.

        Rainbow looked as though somepony had asked her to explain the concept of walking.

        “Yeah... you know. Smoothie stuff. Yogurt, berries, protein mix...”

        “I, um... don’t have anything like that,” Fluttershy squeaked. She pulled the blanket further up her face, covering her nose completely.

        Dash’s eyebrows crinkled, but her body held back any sort of dejected slump.

        “Oh,” she said. “Well, then what do you have around for breakfast? I’m starving.”

        Fluttershy considered the contents of her pantry for a moment. As content as she was to miss a meal out of convenience (noting that she could stand to trim a few pounds from her shapely figure, untempered by regular flying), Fluttershy usually settled for a few nibbles of whatever flowers she had picked up at the market a few days before. Somehow, she imagined the idea of a light daffodil breakfast might not be up Rainbow Dash’s alley.

        “There, um... there should be some vegetables in the crisper, and, um... eggs?”

        Rainbow squinted curiously.

        “Eggs?”

        Fluttershy eeped and huddled further under her blanket, trying to camouflage herself away from Rainbow Dash’s pending breakfast frustration.

        “I could cook them for you if you want...” she murmured through the blanket, quivering an undue amount for the simple matter of a poorly-stocked pantry.

        Rainbow Dash shrugged.

        “Naw, it’s okay. I can just head to my place and pick up some breakfast. I don’t have anything to do for a few hours anyway.”

        Rainbow Dash ducked around the corner, and Fluttershy heard the clanging of pots and pans follow, wincing as she heard what sounded implacably to be her large saucepan, likely hit against the countertop from the sound of the hollow twong that carried over to her bed.

        The crashing stopped again for a moment, and Rainbow Dash leaned back around the corner, holding a skillet awkwardly between her hooves.

        “Unless... do you want me to make you breakfast?”

        The image of a flustered but focused Rainbow Dash popped into Fluttershy’s head, eyes squinted in concentration as she attempted to jostle a frying pan of scrambled eggs. Fluttershy imagined watching the blue pegasus wiggle and dart around the kitchen, frantically searching for ingredients hidden in cupboards, agitated but committed the idea of her breakfast cookery.

        For a reason she couldn’t explain, Fluttershy considered the scene a second time, but with Dash dressed in a frilly white skirt and accompanying black maid’s outfit.

        Rainbow Dash turned her head in Fluttershy’s imagining and blushed through the Prance-style maid-hat on her rainbow mane.

        Fluttershy mimicked the imaginary blush harder than she intended, the yellow of her face quickly being consumed by red.

        “Uh, Flutters? You okay? Do you want me to make you breakfast, or...?” Rainbow Dash let the sentence dally off without finishing, leaving Fluttershy a chance to interject.

        Fluttershy simply squeaked as Dash spoke, and looked as though she wished we could melt into her blanket and never return.

        She managed to pipe up after a few seconds of pregnant silence.

        “N-no... that’s okay.” Fluttershy lowered the blanket a bit, and cleared her throat. “I mean... no, that’s fine. I can make something to eat when you’re gone.”

        “If you say so,” Dash responded. She darted out of sight and back into the kitchen, giving Fluttershy a final wake up clang before she returned to view.

        “Well, I’d better take off then. I have just enough time to eat and make it to the track with a bit of a cool-down for my stomach in-between. No good flying on a full stomach, right?”

        Fluttershy blinked as though she had been asked about quantum weather mechanics or fish sociology.

        “Um... no?”

        Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, but spared her friend the exasperated sigh she would normally have tendered at such flight-exercise obliviousness.

        “Nevermind. I’ll catch you later, okay?” Rainbow Dash stepped towards the dormitory door as she spoke, pausing on ‘okay’ with her hoof on the door-handle, ready to turn. She looked back at the bed as she waited for Fluttershy’s response.

        In her head, Fluttershy was contemplating the events of last night. What had happened. Why it had happened. She and Rainbow Dash had... and then they’d... and she’d wanted to...

        And now she was just supposed to let her go without saying anything?

        Fluttershy wanted so badly to move her mouth. She wanted to get past the squeak she knew was building in her throat and talk in the loudest volume she could manage (which was barely above a conversational murmur) about how she felt after last night, and  how badly she wanted to do it again.

        She did want to do it again. Kissing Rainbow Dash had felt better than anything in the whole of her life up until that point. And the tingling she got from each kiss had lingered. She could still feel it with her today, just strong enough that even thought of Rainbow Dash’s name was enough to kick up a tiny spray of somatic sparks underneath Fluttershy’s skin.

        More than wanting kisses, she wanted something else.

She wanted Rainbow Dash.

She liked Rainbow Dash.

        She had always liked her as a friend, no questions or concerns, ever since that day that Rainbow Dash had stood up for her to her terrible school bullies. She and Rainbow Dash, despite their differences in ambition and personality, had aligned their post-secondary schedules to attend the same university, even if there were no classes they could share. Even now, as Rainbow Dash ventured further into the athletics program and Fluttershy waffled between majors, she was still grateful to have her best friend along for the ride – to help when she was scared, and be there to talk to when she needed a friend.

        The thing her brain had cemented very firmly in the ‘want’ center of her desires was neither of those things though. Fluttershy wanted Rainbow Dash in a different way, a way that she could feel burning in the back of her skull. She hadn’t thought about it, really, before... the kisses last night had been the first catalyst.

        Now that her lips were still tingling in remembrance of Dash’s expert, enthusiastic attention, and they had shared a bed together... Fluttershy wanted more. She couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more in her life.

        But she couldn’t just say that.

        What would Dash think? She had been very assertive that the whole thing was noncommittal... ‘I did this with an old friend’, Fluttershy thought she had heard. That had set the expectation meter in her head all over the place; as it stood, Fluttershy was perhaps the worst objective judge of quality of affection, or what that kind of interaction might mean after the fact. She did feel, however, that kissing anypony as enthusiastically as she had kissed Rainbow Dash, and vice versa, had to mean something special.

        But she couldn’t bring herself to say it up. It was too awkward. Too terrible. Better to let years go by and Rainbow Dash would never learn of her sudden onset affection, or anything more of the matter of that weekend, destined to fade into the annals of history and perhaps be recalled one night by Fluttershy if she was up quite late and lapsed into the remembrance of old, pointless stories.

        So why did she want to say something so bad?

        Fluttershy shook her head.

        “Okay,” she said at long last.

        “Great.” Rainbow Dash turned the door-handle, and the wooden-frame creaked angrily, sounding as grumpy in the morning as Rainbow Dash looked.

        “I’ll see you at the party then–or, did you want me to meet you here before so we can fly together?”

        “Together!” Fluttershy practically shouted from behind her blanket. The force of her volume was enough to jostle the frilly edges of the pillow she was holding.

        Dash nodded. Of course. She should have expected.

        “I’ll swing by with about an hour to spare, okay?”

        “Okay.” Fluttershy acquiesced with a hoof tracing languidly over her blankets. She wasn’t sure about the party in the first place... but the best way to convince herself to go seemed to be a guarantee that her best friend would be there, likely dressed up enough in her weekend party-wear and looking exquisite.

        Fluttershy had always liked to see Rainbow Dash dress up, but she found herself hoping more than anything she would put on a little extra for the party.

        Rainbow Dash nodded and was halfway out the door before she stopped. Her body froze as though it had been struck by lightning, suddenly paralyzed by the notion of something else. Something she had forgotten to do.

        You can deal with the aftermath in the morning, she had thought.

        Of course, past Rainbow had left a big enough mess for present Rainbow to clean up.

        She had to say something.

        But she didn’t know where to start.

        “So... about last night.”

        Fluttershy’s eyes brimmed with anticipation about what might be in Dash’s game-plan for consultation, but she struggled hard to keep the aquamarine curiosity of her irises trapped away behind the fabric she had collected to surround her.

        “...yes?” Fluttershy squeaked. She could have waited for Dash to start the discussion, but the nagging in the back of her head wanted answers.

        “It’s, uh...”

        Rainbow Dash left a longer pause than was common when she spoke. The words she wanted to say fell over themselves in her head, struggling to form the sentence she was searching for.

        “...you’re not weirded out, are you? I didn’t want things to be awkward afterwards...”

        Fluttershy clutched a mouthful of blanket between her teeth, subtle enough behind the wall of fabric that Dash couldn’t see – or couldn’t if she had been looking. Her eyes were ambling around the room in search of something to focus on that wasn’t her friend’s face, peering anxiously out from behind her bedding.

        “Like, we’re still cool, right? I wouldn’t want a one time thing”–Fluttershy bit down extra hard on her blanket–”to get in the way of our friendship.”

        Rainbow Dash settled her eyes finally, looking towards Fluttershy for assurance of her speculation.

        Fluttershy spit out her mouthful of blanket with a tiny ‘pf’, quiet enough to keep it from Rainbow Dash’s ears.

        She nodded her head rapidly.

        “Mhm-hmm. We’re still... it’s okay. Nothing’s weird.”

        Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow. She couldn’t tell if Fluttershy was flubbing her words because she was being dishonest, or just normal Fluttershy.

        “You sure? You can tell me there’s something on your mind–”

        “No! I mean, I’m fine. Really. We’re... um... ‘cool’.”

        Dash stood with her hoof on the door for a moment, staring towards Fluttershy in search of something that might give away a hint of dishonesty, or let her know there was something more she needed to talk about.

        She wanted to believe her. As amazing as those kisses had been... Fluttershy was still her friend, first and foremost, and she knew from past experience that muddying a friendship with pieces of other types of relationships often ended in disaster. The last thing she wanted was to lose another friend because she couldn’t control herself around Fluttershy’s delicate, adorable, intoxicatingly cute–

        Dash shook her head back and forth, squinting her eyes tight in an attempt to clear the thoughts worming their way into her subconscious.

        “Right,” she said with finality. “Well... if we’re cool, then that’s awesome. I’m still good to show up later so we can head to the party?”

        “Uh-huh.” Fluttershy gave a cursory nod, lowering the blanket further so the whole of her face was visible. Rainbow Dash scanned her face for emotion, but found only the usual perpetual timidness that was always there.

        “Rad. I’ll catch you later then.”

        “Yeah. Catch you later.”

        Rainbow Dash hopped outside and shut the door before her thoughts had a chance to run away again. Fluttershy said things were ‘cool’, and Rainbow Dash wanted them to be cool, so that was that. Nothing had to be uncomfortable or awkward.

        And, there was still the party to look forward to. As much as she was loathe to socialize with some of the undesirable elements in her school, a night of socializing and drinking would probably help allay both the worries lurking in the back of her head. First her (hopefully temporary) cloudball suspension, and now this whole Fluttershy business. She’d have to remind herself not to get completely lost in whatever drinks were available.

Steeling herself into a crouch for a moment, Rainbow Dash kicked off and was in the sky in an instant, her wings flapping at their usual metered gait and barrelling her home so fast she didn’t have time to think anymore.

        Behind Fluttershy’s door, the yellow pegasus lowered her blanket to her lap and traced another hoof across her mouth.

        She wasn’t sure if she could wash away the feeling of Rainbow Dash on her lips... or if she wanted to.