someone left a cake in the rain

[rewritethis]

[BANG. BANG.]

Dash! Dash!! Open up!

[Doorknocking this violent isn't an uncommon occurrence around this particular dorm, especially accompanied by that voice. What might be a bit more notable is that the sound actually seems to be coming from somewhere close to the floor. Yes, closer than usual. In fact, knocking probably isn't the right word...]

Comments

[rewritethis]

[The extra weight isn't making it much easier for him to work his hands free...]

Yeah, and whose fault is that?

[elementofloyalty]

Both of ours.

[Still giggling, she loops her forelegs under his shoulders, then half-flaps, half-leans to help buy him some freedom.]

[rewritethis]

[He can't really contest that, but since he's in this kind of mood, he grumbles under his breath anyway.] You didn't even need to come in here...

[He claps and presses his hands to the nearest couple of bars. Considerably slower than they burst out, and with hardly a sound other than the crackling of the transmutation itself, the entire circle retracts smoothly into the floor.]

[elementofloyalty]

[She doesn't let go so easily -- instead, she pumps for altitude, then turns a backflip -- with him still in her grip, and her still laughing. She's strong, and her grip is firm -- she won't let him drop.]

I really wasn't trying to pull any pranks or anything. Just help you out when I saw you needed it. I'm sorry.

[rewritethis]

Ghh...!

[Sure about that? Because the moment she hoisted him up, and especially when she did that backflip, he went back to flailing pretty damn hard. Hard enough that he apparently didn't hear her just then...]

[elementofloyalty]

HEY! [She clonks him lightly with a hoof.] Listen to me when I'm apologizing to you, dummy!

[rewritethis]

[It doesn't hurt, but it stuns him just long enough to temporarily distract him from his struggling. He cranes his neck round.] What?!

[elementofloyalty]

I SAID I'M SORRY!

[Rainbow, yelling that might not be the best idea. But after she's slammed those words into his brain at volume, she moderates her tone.]

I'm sorry I got so worked up. I was just trying to help you by cleaning your window. I didn't mean to cause a fight.

[rewritethis]

[He gives her the best sidelong look he can manage from this unconventional position. Hey, if she apologised first, that means he's won, right?

Then again, from this vantage point, it's even easier to observe just how badly they've - well, how badly he's trashed this room, mainly.

Seeing that, he has to chuckle a bit too.]

Nah... it's okay. Maybe I overreacted a little.

[...what do you mean, understatement of the century?!]

[elementofloyalty]

[Rainbow... just isn't as stubborn as Ed, as much as she will never ever admit that fact. So yeah, technically he won, but to her mind they'd both tied when they both got trapped.]

[She sets him back on the floor, surprisingly gently, back to giggling again.]

We both did. Come on, let's pick this place up.

[rewritethis]

[Safely grounded in more than one sense, he immediately decides to act as if his technically winning actually matters - there's a vague air of superiority about him as he picks his way over to the previously impaled chair. Not that said air is much of a change from normal.]

Just ask next time. [He thinks about this, and adds:] If there is a next time.

[elementofloyalty]

Okay, you tell me what nice things I can do for -- THE LAUNDRY!

[Rainbow flashes out the window with a low jet roar, plowing into the cloud outside. Clothes fly everywhere, and for a minute it seems like disaster, but the pegasus spins into a whirlwind around them.]

[She spin-dries them for just a minute or two, then zooms back into the room, making a sharp vertical turn just as she shoots over his bed. The clothing her wake has dragged behind her smacks into the wall, then falls in half-neat piles onto the sheets.]

[Rainbow pokes her head down, upside-down, to finish her sentence.]

So what CAN I do to surprise you with nice things then?

[rewritethis]

[With the chair and floor repaired, he's about to move onto the bookshelf, when suddenly upside-down pony at eye level.

Some part of him wonders, not for the first time, when the hell that stopped being completely weird.]

Whatever you want, if you're that set on it. [Shrug.] But you don't have to do anything.

[elementofloyalty]

I know.

[Rainbow giggles a little into her hoof again, just because -- well he's so bad at friendship sometimes!]

Well, you sure did get clean laundry out of all of this!

[rewritethis]

[Sometimes?]

I'm telling you, it was fine before. I don't even know where you got the idea.

[Clap.]

...But thanks, I guess.

[Although that might be the least heartfelt-sounding expression of gratitude possible short of an explicit "screw you", he did hold off on it until the noise from his shelf transmutation was loud enough to mostly drown it out...]

[elementofloyalty]

It was a giant pile. I think it actually had visible stink lines.

[Like she said -- bad, bad, bad.]

[Rainbow half-drops, half-somersaults out of the air to land on all four hooves.] Oh hey! If I had something that required special washing care, could you just -- [She claps her hooves together] -- whisk the dirt out of it instead? Usually Rarity knows how to take care of those things, but she's not here...

[rewritethis]

[He looks over his shoulder at her.] ...You wear clothes now?

[elementofloyalty]

[She makes a little shrugging gesture.] It's a dress, for when the balls and stuff occur that I don't have to wear my uniform to.

[rewritethis]

[Excuse the slight case of nonplussed staring.]

Wait, you wear dresses? [He points.] You wear dresses?

[elementofloyalty]

]She blinks at him.]

...Yes? It's not as nice as the one Rarity made me for the Gala, but it's all right.

[rewritethis]

[what who how when why

With some difficulty, he manages to settle on one question at a time.]

Where the hell did you find one? Just lying around? [Like, apparently, people's cakes? Because he can kind of see them getting her a custom-made uniform even if it wasn't something he would've thought worth blowing money on, but...]

[elementofloyalty]

I had it made, Ed. And if I ever see Rarity again I am going to beg forgiveness for anything mean I EVER said to her. [Rainbow sighs, remembering the process of getting a decent dress with much more painful clarity than she wants to.]

[rewritethis]

Well, if you say so... but a dress? Why?

[He may be a little hung up on this point - although whether he's struggling more with the general concept of equines in clothes or with the idea of her specifically in dresses is a good question, really.]

[elementofloyalty]

What else would I wear to the ball?

[And Rainbow is puzzled by why HE'S puzzled.]

[rewritethis]

And that's normal for you guys? Really?

[Most importantly, has she been naked in front of him this entire time because uh.]