Rarity likes the summer's Applejack the most. Hours of field work, planting and harvesting, dyes her skin a dark golden brown and causes the freckles that only appear in her face in the winter to erupt across her arms and back. She spends these months covered in dirt and sweat and Rarity, who normally can't stand anything short of immaculate, finds herself loving Applejack's soil stained fingers and dirty nails when they wrap around her hands to bring them to her lips.
It's moments like this, the two of them sitting on a hill over-looking Sweet apple acres, Rarity's head rested in the hollow of Applejack's shoulder and Applejack's hand resting on the wide curve of Rarity's hip, that she really appreciates the simplicity of her friend and lover. They don't have to deal with the confusion that the oblivious Twilight and her many suitors deal with or the shear absurdity of the ménage a tros of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. She loves it because in Applejack's simplicity there is honesty. She always says what's on her mind, never holding back a single thought, never acts for a second that she's anything other than a country farm girl, and Rarity, who is always so hung up on manners and etiquette, can never seem to get enough of Applejack's brand of bluntness and inability to hold back. Applejack is never judgmental with this and never hurtful; she merely tells it how it is and how she sees it.
There was once a time, long ago, when Rarity thought of changing these things in Applejack, of ironing out these wrinkles. Now, however, she wouldn't dream of it. Sometime along their relationship she learned that it would be like bulldozing an ancient temple or forest to make room for a strip mall, replacing something beautiful and unique with something boring and generic. The fact that she had even thought this at any point haunts her. There are nights when she wakes from a dream of succeeding in this now blasphemous task of creating a "perfect" Applejack. On these nights she'll wake with tears in her eyes and turn to wrap her arms around the heavily snoring Applejack sprawled across the bed and go back to sleep with the thick musky smell of a sweaty, overworked farmer as a lullaby.
AJ brings her out of these thoughts with a soft kiss on her cheek. She asks her "a penny for your thoughts?" but Rarity just shakes her head before giving Applejack an eskimo kiss in the overly saccharine way that has become the definition of their relationship. Applejack gives her that 1000watt smile that Rarity would fight armies and monsters to always be able to see and she feels like she could never be happier.
