casual friends

Here is a scene delivered unto you as it happened and as it felt: 

It was a Tuesday afternoon, the weather a cold 40° degrees Fahrenheit [4° Celsius] , rolling gray clouds shadowing the university grounds and Twilight Sparkle, a half-full backpack hanging from her shoulders. 

Twilight Sparkle was, in that moment, committing two grave sins. The first—we will speak of the second at a later time—was the sin of hope. Of excitement, of desire, wanting, but she was oblivious to her crime, foolish silly little girl, because at that moment she knew and cared for exactly one thing—a very pretty girl made a post on Pictogram containing a photo of the university library with the following vital caption. 

Libraries are supposed to make you productive! Let us test that theory, shall we? 📚

Hope is routine’s arch-enemy. 

On Tuesday afternoons, Twilight should be at home, watching the weekly vlog her favorite video essayist posts. But there she was, hope slithering its way into her heart because there was a strong chance that that pretty girl might like her back. 

Her cellphone felt heavy in the back left-side pocket of her jeans, refusing to be invisible and weightless as it often was. It protested its place, and even if it could not jolt its owner with electricity, it burned her, wanting her to ruin the surprise. Her heart agreed, pumping loudly in her chest, beating faster with every step she took closer and closer to the library. 

Twilight Sparkle, in her hope, crafted a plan that was not like her usual plans. Not one based on fact and logic and weeks of analysis, but on unstable and unpredictable things like excitement and gut feelings. 

She would go to the library’s second floor, find Rarity, and then she’d get to help Rarity with her paper and spend the day with her. 

She rehearsed her speech as she sped up the library stairs as fast as a library would allow. Maybe she could start with a simple ‘Hi, Rares’. They’d not used nicknames before, but they definitely felt close to the level for them, and—and there was the door in the distance, okay, okay, right, okay. 

Swallowing her nerves, Twilight tiptoed towards the room, a silly grin stretching up the edges of her lips. Rarity was visible through the half-open door, every inch a long-suffering student as she sat there, her laptop pushed to the side, her face buried inside her crossed arms over the table. 

“What was I thinking?” Twilight heard Rarity say, muffled by her own arms. “Am I an idiot? Why would I do this to myself?”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Twilight said, stepping into the room, smiling brightly at how fast Rarity turned around. “I’m pretty sure everyone who’s ever done any sort of higher learning has thought that at some point.”

“Twilight!” Rarity exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Homework!” Twilight replied, taking off one of her backpack straps, leaving it hanging from the other shoulder. “I was having a hard time focusing at home. I thought I might join you if you don’t mind. Apparently misery loves company?”

Rarity giggled. “Well, you’re right about the miserable part, at the very least,” she said after exhaling an overproduced sigh. She nudged the chair next to her a few inches away from the table. “Maybe we can trade? What’s your homework?”

“Advanced engineering.” 

“Never mind!” Rarity quickly exclaimed, clutching her laptop against her chest as Twilight sat down. “You can keep your torture, thank you very much.” 

“What’s your homework?” Twilight asked, because her definition of first base involved helping people with academic matters, and homerun was co-authoring a paper together, publish it in a prestigious magazine and win at least three awards. Surely fashionable robotics was a concept they could pioneer together?

“Oh. Another essay,” Rarity said. “A proposal of sorts for a final project for my interdisciplinary module.” She gestured vaguely with her hand. “A concept.” 

“I see! Very specific.” 

“It is!” Rarity huffed. “Very, very specific, which is why I must get it right. But it also involves a lot of research, and I am perhaps realizing I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.” 

“What’s the topic?” Twilight asked, taking out her own laptop, sorting through her mental index of research websites. “Maybe I can help?”

“No,” Rarity quickly said, before clearing her throat and elaborating. “I mean, thank you, but I’m not sure there’s much you can do that the thousand tabs I’ve been avoiding can’t do.” She paused. “Actually, I was thinking of you earlier.” 

“Oh?” said Twilight. It did not sound eager. 

“Yes!” Rarity leaned back, biting her lip. “I’ve been having to switch between so many of these godforsaken websites, I am perhaps starting to understand your three monitor monstrosity.” 

“They work! It’s efficient. You can shave off at least three clicks per second,” Twilight exclaimed, delighted. 

“Three! My.” 

“You know that centuries ago, academics used to have a whole device to have several books all open at the same time? Look, here,” she continued, opening her laptop. 

“Twilight, darling, dearest.” Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. “ I know what a table looks like.” 

“I’m serious! It’s called a reading wheel.” The rolling of her eyes complimented her silly smile. After a quick search, she pulled up an image of a water-wheel looking device with flat surfaces holding open books. “See, this one holds up to six books.” 

“Six! And you only have three monitors? For shame.” 

“I know,” Twilight sighed, shaking her head. “I need to upgrade. Maybe something like a newsroom center!” She gestured vaguely upwards. “Monitor there, and there, and there, and there, and there.”

Rarity laughed, elbow on the table and chin resting on her fist. “And a laptop to the side for good measure, of course.”

Twilight grinned. “Of course.”

“Well, I’ll have you know—” Rarity began, idly reaching for her cellphone. Her sparkling eyes glanced over the screen, but quickly shifted into alarm, causing whatever she was saying to come to an abrupt halt. “Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, watching as Rarity’s entire posture transformed, her friend immediately sitting up straight, fingers quickly tapping away at the screen and opening what Twilight glimpsed as Pictogram’s comment section. “Rarity?”

“Sorry,” Rarity said quickly, voice shaking slightly before she started gathering her things. “I think I might need to leave.”

“Leave?” Twilight felt her heart fall. Out of her own volition, she started packing up her things as well. “Is everything okay? What happened?”

“Nothing’s happened! Everything is fine.” She finished shoving her things inside her bag and then turned to Twilight. “It was lovely to—” She stopped. “Wh—? Why are you leaving?”

Twilight faltered. She knew why she was there, of course. ‘I want to be with you’ is exactly why she was there, and she knew she ought to say it, but she froze and instead blurted out: “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d need company.”

“…No, I’m fine, it’s all right,” Rarity said apologetically, the second rejection she’d stamped on Twilight that day. She slung her bag over her shoulder and offered a pained smile. “Good luck with—”

“Ah, Rarity,” came a man’s voice and his whole self moments later, stepping into the room, a hand running through blonde hair, sleeves of his pink sweater tied around his neck and over his polo shirt. “There you are!”

Twilight had seen Blueblood before, of course. She’d seen him around school, in official university functions Celestia had invited her to, and in his own Pictogram account when she’d let curiosity get the best of her months ago. A name and face to ascribe to the man she knew as her friend’s ex, and before that, as the asshole responsible for her next-door neighbor weeping long into the night for months. 

“Blueblood,” Rarity replied, tone shifting instantly and startlingly fast from rushed as all hells to smooth and polite as her smile. “I just saw your message.”

“Excellent. Let me take you out for coffee, will you?” His eyes shifted towards Twilight for one, two, three seconds, her fingers digging into her backpack, before going back to Rarity. “Unless you’re busy?” 

You might remember Twilight Sparkle committed two grave sins that day. We’ve spoken at length of the first—hope, and how it slithers into places it should not, helping one up onto the step-ladder hope itself is planning on kicking you off of. 

Here is where the second graver sin manifests when just as Twilight was about to inform him that Rarity was in fact very busy, Rarity spoke before her. 

“No! No, I’m not busy,” she said, an almost imperceptible stammer in her voice. “I wasn’t doing anything important at all.”

Twilight Sparkle, you see, had committed the terrible, painful crime of overstating her importance in Rarity’s life. 

She looked at Rarity, eyes wide, her head shaking ever so slightly, and if their eyes met, Rarity only allowed it for less than a second up until Blueblood spoke again.  

“Won’t you introduce your acquaintance?”

“Oh! Of course, yes. So sorry.” Rarity gestured to Twilight. “Blueblood, this is Twilight, my neighbor.” She then added, and Twilight tried her best not to read it as an afterthought, “And a good friend.”

“Ah. Rarity’s never mentioned you before, sorry,” he said before smiling politely. “But based on your expression, I see she has mentioned me.” He winked at Rarity. “All bad things, I suppose.”

“No—” Rarity lied. 

“Don’t you worry, Twilight,” he told her. “I’m working on my redemption story.” He flashed Rarity a smile and gestured outside the room. “Let’s?”

“Yes! Yes. Let’s,” Rarity said quickly, stepping towards him before turning towards Twilight. For a brief moment, her expression was back to being apologetically pained. “It was nice seeing you, Twilight. Good luck studying.”

“Y-Yeah, you too, Rarity,” Twilight replied, heart twisting in her chest, and the lesson on her sins refusing to stick as she added, “I’ll be here until closing, I think. In case you decide you want to come back again later, okay?”

Rarity smiled. “All right, thank you for telling me.” She stepped back, the genuine smile on her face faltering when Blueblood rested his hand on the small of her back. “Have a good rest of your day.” 

“You too, Rarity.” 

“Don’t hit the books too hard,” Blueblood added before he and Rarity disappeared around the corner of the door, leaving Twilight sitting there a minute before she threw her backpack on the table with a loud and resounding thud. 

“Great,” she hissed, worried on Rarity’s behalf, as well as nursing her wounded pride, lacerated from jealousy. 

Rarity didn’t even hesitate. She just went with him! She could have stayed with Twilight, she could have made any number of excuses, and Twilight would have gone along with it gladly, but no.

God.

And the way he touched her, too! As if he still had any right to her. 

She fished her phone out of her pocket, opened her messages with Rarity, and… and what? Started typing a message? What did she even say? What could she even say? But she had to say something, didn’t she?

Twilight stared at the sent message a second, waiting to see if Rarity would come online. She waited one, two, three seconds, only to click on the emoji keyboard and stare holes into the heart emoji. She could send it. It would be fine. It would show that she cares. 

Ughhhhhh. How could she have just gone with her ex like that!

Her phone clicked as she locked it and shoved it back in her pocket before leaning back on the chair, head tilting back far enough she could glare at the fluorescent ceiling lights. 

Maybe she should tell Applejack. Shouldn’t she tell Applejack? Applejack was Rarity’s best friend, so wouldn’t she want to know Rarity went to get coffee with her ex? Her ex. Her stupid, asshole, prissy, made-her-cry-for-forever ex. 

“It’s not my business,” she grumbled eventually. She wasn’t Rarity’s babysitter. She didn’t care what she did, or who she went with, or… or… 

“Fine,” she whispered, closing her eyes, anger softening. “I’ll wait here, and if I don’t hear from her by the time the library closes, I’ll tell AJ.”

BZZZT!

She practically tore her pocket open with how fast she reached for her phone, that stupid hope rearing its head and then vanishing just as fast when it was not Rarity texting her, but Sunset. 

Twilight let out a long breath and started to type.

She shouldn’t have answered.

She really shouldn’t have answered. She really should have stayed home.

I’m okay, she told herself. And she was. She was! 

She was. 

Until she checked her messages with Rarity and saw she’d been left on read. 

“Great,” she muttered, getting ready to go. “Just great.”