Rarity rolled over in place and blinked several times, hard. She rolled her eyeballs about beneath the curtains of her eyelids, trying to force life into her skull. What a bizarre dream she had been having—Michael Jackson and Conan the Barbarian had been helping her save the world from aliens. Herbie the Love Bug was there, too, of course, because really, why not? Excluding Herbie the Love Bug would be wrong. But she threw the dream out of her mind. It was a cold, miserable, rainy Sunday morning, and her son was out of the house. Her husband, too, she realized, reaching an arm back across the bed and patting at the empty spot on the bed. But at least he would be back later that night; he had to go up to San Francisco for the day. But for now, at least, she had the house to herself.
 
The heater whirred into life. She stepped out of bed and shivered, quick-stepping across the room and snatching her warm, soft robe. Even though she knew the house was heated—at a balmy sixty-seven degrees, according to the electric numbers on the thermostat—she couldn’t chase the autumn-winter chill from her bones. Drawing the belt tight about her, Rarity stepped to the window and threw back the curtains. Separated by a pane of glass, the icy fingers of winter were already slithering through the dying body of fall. Just a few miles north, in fact, she wouldn’t be surprised to see snow. She hated days like this. They made her lazy, and she hated being lazy. But at the same time, she loved it—and this was the kind of day to curl up with a trashy dime novel or inane rom-com, maybe a glass of sherry. Not that a lady would be drinking at ten thirty in the morning, of course.
 
Part of her was tempted to crawl back into bed and wait until Spike got back—they still had another day before her parents brought their son home, of course—but she caught her eye in the mirrored door of her closet. She sighed. Spike never missed a chance to admire her body, and she knew she could still turn heads, but that was hardly the point, hardly any comfort. “Why bother being the prettiest girl at the ball”, she’d say to him, “if I don’t think I am anymore?” She looked out the window and sighed again.
 
No, she told herself. She was entirely too mature to be a slave to her id. The robe hit the floor with a soft thud, followed by her pajamas. She pulled a drawer open and began rooting around, pulling out a pair of tights  (she was delighted to find she didn’t even have to wiggle and jiggle that much to slip into them), and one of her favorite workout shirts, one of Spike’s old shirts from his teenage punk phase—she liked it so much she insisted on saving it when he wanted to throw it away. Next, the warmest, thickest pair of socks she could find. Her mother had gotten these for her when the family had moved to Wisconsin for a few years, when her father had gone to the Packers. That had been right before he’d retired, actually. That nostalgic smile stayed with her as she got ready, stayed with her as she munched on a piece of toast and egg whites, stayed with her as she gave Opal her second breakfast, stayed with her right up until she opened the doo. She closed her eyes, slipped her headphones on, zippered up her jacket, and stepped into the cold Sunday wind.
 
*
 
Rarity could only imagine what she must have looked like when she stepped back through the door, into blessed comfort and warmth. Her face was so cold, it felt like it was on fire, and she was reasonably sure her toes were entirely fused together into a single lump. But still, she felt alive, felt good, drunk on the adrenaline cooldown and pride in knowing that she could still run as hard and as fast and as far as she could fifteen years ago, and as much as she hated getting filthy like this, that feeling was worth anything. Nearly. But at least it kept her busy. Opal rolled onto her back, staring at Rarity upside-down through sleepy eyes, still in the same spot on the windowsill over the heater that Rarity had left her in almost three hours ago. Rarity stood over her, hands on her hips, head cocked to the side.
 
“You sicken me.”
 
Opal was, clearly, devastated by this. She showed it by yawning, stretching, and turning her belly towards Rarity, purring.
 
Rarity laughed in the back of her throat and obliged the hedonistic cat, scratching her tummy. “Maybe I should have called you Jabba”, she mused to no-one in particular. Opal responded by batting playfully at Rarity’s fingers. She indulged Opal for a few minutes before turning to clean herself up. Opal watched her for a moment as she walked away, then rolled back onto her side.
 
Rarity peeled off her shirt and turned on the shower. She threw the sweaty rag into a hamper, then set about pulling her pants off. She caught a glance of her butt in the mirror, but this time, she didn’t mind it so much. For a few glorious minutes after her workouts, she knew she was still a bombshell. Naked, she slid into the shower’s loving embrace. The heat of the water against her still-icy skin almost hurt, but she loved it. For a few minutes, she just stood there, leaning against the shower wall, feeling the warmth falling against her body, feeling her heartbeat slowing down and her breaths come slower and deeper. She sank her weight down against the wall, lower, until her bottom touched the warm, wet granite. Her eyes closed, and she was temped to just stay in there forever, to wait until the warm water turned to cold. But no. She had things to do.
 
Her eyes snapped open and she stood up. She stood in the shower and turned it off, watching as the last of the water ran down the drain, watched as the last few defiant droplets of water trickled out of the showerhead. The steadily slowing rhythm beat against her ears. Then, with a gurgle and depressing finality, the showerhead coughed and gurgled its last. Except for the fan whirring dully above her head, the bathroom was silent. The glass door slid within its metal channel and she stepped out into the hot, wet air, reaching out idly to snatch a fluffy blue towel off of the rack. She swung it about and wrapped it around her naked body.
 
She wiped a clear space in the mirror and sighed. The quiet buzz of pride and adrenaline had died away from her brain, and she suddenly remembered every one of her fifty-three years. The weight of them threatened to crush her. She suddenly found herself wishing very hard for Spike to be back home. Not that she feared a younger woman, of course, she was past that—he had married her, for goodness’ sake, she thought, playing with the gold ring on her finger. Had she seen bigger diamonds? Yes, but not a single one prettier. No, she knew he knew she was still a knockout. But she didn’t.
 
She pushed the thought from her mind and dried herself off. Once again, she felt the warm arms of her bathrobe close around her. She patted her hair gently a few times, and, still damp, it hung in loose clumps. Rain hammered against the windows.
 
*
 
She threw herself onto the couch, stretching languidly. Across the room, Opal—who had, shockingly, moved from her windowsill perch of the morning to the back of one of the chairs in the living room—opened one eye at the commotion, then went back to sleep. She reached across the couch to the sidetable, snatching both the remote and the sketchpad that it rested on. The television’s massive, unblinking eye was filled with light and noise, some inane ripoff of Project Runway that she couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. She flicked through the channel guide. She needed background noise, yes, but she needed the right background noise. Cartoons. Perfect. She’d had enough of designing for the fall and winter, and maybe Tom & Jerry’s lunacy and color was just what she needed for an early spring. She made a mental note to give Pinkie a call.
 
The minutes folded in on themselves, and outside her little oasis, the bitter grey wind howled and yawned and moaned like a medieval monster. And as the folded-in-on-themselves minutes folded in on themselves to become hours, Rarity found herself more and more drawn not to the too-bare piece of paper she was scribbling on, but to the whirling wonderland of wacky hijinks unfolding on the screen before her—wonderfully bizarre cartoons that she had completely forgotten about. She must have gotten up at some point for an egg nog, judging by the frothy glass in her hand, but she didn’t remember doing it. God, The Flintstones. She hadn’t watched The Flintstones since she was a little girl. And here, an ad for Chia Pets? They still made those? Good Lord. She found herself warm, and not just from the egg nog.
 
She stood, rocking about on her feet, arms looped around an invisible partner, dancing with the air. She spun away from her partner, twirling her ankle-long bathrobe flamboyantly. She curtseyed politely. “What a dancer you are, Mister Darcy!” she clucked. Leaning over to Opal, her face grew dark, hidden by her hand. “Two left feet. Not a dancing bone in his body, I fear.” Her pale feet carried her into the kitchen, and she stabbed her finger into the advent calendar. She fished the tiny, gold-wrapped chocolate out and popped it into her mouth, opening the cabinet that held the trash can and closing it with a flick of her hips. She did a little dance, swaying to the beat only she could hear.
 
She stopped when she heard a voice cough politely behind her. She wheeled around to see Spike. She briefly wondered how he’d gotten in so quietly, but that question was pushed form her mind by—“How long have you been standing there?” she managed to squeak.
 
He crossed his arms and snorted in his throat. “Long enough to see you being silly.”
 
“A lady is never silly”, she hissed, managing to regain her composure somewhat. “A lady is only ever, at most, wittily irreverent.”
 
“Well then you must not be a lady, because that dance looked pretty silly to me.”
 
They held their staring contest until Spike grew bored of it and sprang into a childish, twisted tongue-out-eyes-wide face. They both broke into laughter. Before the tinkling sounds had died, she was there, arms around his torso and head buried into his chest. She was standing on her tip-toes and the top of her head still barely rose above his chin. “How was your day?” he rumbled down from above her.
 
She took a long time to answer. When she did, she moaned a noise halfway between a whine and a purr, and he felt her frown slightly into his shirt. “Lazy. Warm. I accomplished less than half of what I wanted to do today.”
 
“And I’m sure that’s still twice as much as most women would’ve done on a day like this. It’s still raining. I actually thought we’d get snow today. You work entirely too hard, duchess. You deserve a lazy, warm day once in a while.”
 
She made the whine-purr noise again, louder this time, and perhaps a tad heavier on the whine. “But I like doing things. And besides, I had a lazy warm day just a while ago.”
 
“Two months ago. You went to the spa and cut it short halfway through because Buck was going to be slightly late picking up Martin from daycare, and that was two months ago.”
 
“Slightly?” she scoffed. “Slightly? Try thirty minutes!”
 
“And then before that, there was—“
 
“Alright, alright”, she shushed, reaching up with soft hands, pulling him into a kiss. “Alright. Stop trying to solve my problems and let me wallow in my misery.” She kissed him again.
 
“Fine. But I’m at least cooking you dinner. That’s what we’re having, incidentally.” He nodded to a nondescript paper bag that she hadn’t noticed until now.
 
“Well, what is it?” she asked, looking back up at him. He grinned and raised his eyebrows, looking for all the world like a mustache-less Groucho Marx. “Is that—oh, God, that’s not what I--?” She gasped. “Fred steak?” He nodded, and her eyes went wide. She knew her mouth was starting to water already, and she didn’t even try to hide it. “You horrible, wonderful man!” She sprang upon him again, showering him with kisses. “I’ll go get some wine.” And she slunk away.
 
“I want to show you some designs I’ve done, dear”, she called back into the kitchen over the sound of clinking bottles. “And I shall need you to model again for me.” She came back through the door, bottle in one hand, sketchbook in the other.
 
“I thought you designed women’s clothes”, he shot. She smiled sheepishly.
 
“It’s still only a rough approximation. Still loose, you know. Half-done.” She sidled up to him. “And it’s easier to do these things in three dimensions rather than two. Besides”, she added, playfully swatting at him, “I happen to think you look good in drag. Very fabulous.”
 
*
 
Rarity was sure that she’d eaten back her run, but she didn’t care. Not just now, anyway, still basking in the glow of a good meal and a warm house. She drew closer to him, and he slipped his arm around her. As if in sympathy, the rain outside picked up again. They could hear the sheets screaming down to ground. It was as though the universe was conspiring to keep them near one another—this was hardly weather to pop out for a pint of milk His heat radiated into her body, and for one evening, in one house, for one couple, at least, as their lips started to meet with more passion and more urgency, as their hands found their ways to less innocent places, as clothes started to come off and whatever was on television was forgotten—for them, at least, all was right with the world.