Love Bites

interlude: fluttershy

chapter photo creds: eeriezoundz on tumbr

a/n: this is the calm before the storm. enjoy this mini filler chapter while you can bc we dive right into the action in the next chap 🤩

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When Fluttershy thinks of love, she thinks of nature.

Even as a child, she would sit outside under the trees and look around in awe. She would spend hours in the backyard of her childhood home, frolicing in the dirt and playing with all sorts of woodland creatures.

She loved the way the trees allowed for bird nests, or how the bees and the flowers helped each other survive. It was the reason she chose to take up veterinary studies in college. The never ending cycle of giving and taking was fascinating to her, and nature was, more or less, one giant family. There was nothing more romantic than that.

Fluttershy thought the world around her would be like that too. She thought that people were inherently kind and good– that they would always strive to take care of each other.

But she was naive, and she was wrong. At least she thought so.

When she was ambushed and forcibly turned into a vampire, she retreated into this dark corner of her mind. Fluttershy questioned every single time she was ever kind to someone. She wondered if her situation would have been different if she were stronger, or harsher. She wondered what she had done to deserve this, what terrible sin she had committed that this had to happen to her.

But out of the darkness, there was one silver lining. As Fluttershy curled up in that shadowy corner, there was a group of people who found her. They showed her mercy when she thought she deserved to die. Although reluctant at first, this group of vampire hunters took her in, and were kind to her, despite the fact that she was exactly what they had been trained to kill.

They became... her friends, and eventually– family.

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Her first hands-on mission with the Order was... not exactly what she expected.

Infiltrating a high end party full of vampire cult members made Fluttershy feel like she was being thrown into the deep end. But Rarity had asked her personally and she wasn't sure how to say no, especially after all she had done for Fluttershy in the past few months since she was turned. The least she could do was help out.

The mission turned out well for the most part, and after everything was all said and done, Rainbow Dash drove her back to her apartment– just the two of them, a predicament that made Fluttershy's stomach do backflips. Their friendship had come a long way since the night they met, but as the friendship progressed, other feelings began to rise to the surface.

"So what did you think of your first assignment?" Rainbow asks, breaking the easy silence between them.

"Nerve wracking," Fluttershy admits, "But they told me you were watching from the security cameras. That made me feel safer."

Fluttershy cringes internally and turns her head to look out the window as soon as the words leave her mouth, terrified of Rainbow's reaction. She's not sure why she said anything at all. Her feelings for Rainbow Dash were new and scary and completely unexpected. Fluttershy had tried her best to conceal them, but they always found a way to get the better of her.