By the time I return to my warm basket of laundry, I can already tell it’s been tampered with. A few miscellaneous socks are lying on the carpet, as are a pair of jeans and some dish cloths.

And less than six feet away from all that is Fluttershy—currently clad in my mostly black Guns N Roses: Appetite For Destruction shirt—standing before my full-length mirror. She takes the time to fiddle with the fabric on the shirt so that it doesn’t wrinkle. Then she straightens out her mane; having just shoved her entire head through the shirt’s narrow top.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I ask her sharply.

She doesn’t bother turning to me. Clearly, she’s still enjoying the half-clothed reflection of herself in the mirror. “Wearing one of your shirts, of course.”

“Okay. But why?”

Finally, she spins around. “Don’t you also like wearing clothes the moment they come out of the dryer?”

I roll my eyes. “Well, obviously. It’s universally known that the second greatest thing in life is putting on socks straight from the dryer.”

She tilts her head at me. “So what’s the first greatest thing?”

“When it happens, you’ll know.” Something a tad more pressing comes to mind. “How’d you even get in here so fast? I must’ve been in the other room for less than a minute.”

Fluttershy blushes as she glances away, hiding half her face behind her mane. “You… you left one of your windows unlocked. You really should be more careful about leaving things unlocked around here.”

I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Are you sure, Anon? Like… really sure? Maybe someone broke it earlier.”

“You broke one of my…?” I start, about to get loud when I shut my trap. “Why do you keep on calling me that? That’s not how you pronounce my name in the slightest.”

She furrows her brows. “It’s not?”

“No. For the last damn time, it’s Anthony! That’s what I’ve been telling each and every one of you ponies since the day I arrived here!”

Fluttershy sinks her rump to the floor, my shirt falling to her hooves as she does. “Okay, then. From this day forward, I shall call you… Anon-thony.”

I sigh. “No, it’s just… just Anthony, okay?”

“Okay.” She tries again. “Anthony. Is that close?”

“Yes, finally you got it.”

That makes her smile for some reason. “Does that mean you’ll let me wear your shirt around town today?”

“Why would you want to do that? Do you even listen to Guns N Roses?”

Fluttershy gasps. “You can listen to roses? Really? And here I had no idea! If I’m being honest, I’ve only been sniffing them up until now.” She pauses to contemplate. “Although, I don’t think I’d want to hear what any guns have to say. They all seem to say the same thing—bang, ping, boom, pachuu! Always so loud and abrasive!”

What type of guns have you been listening to? I ponder, before I add, “You do realize Guns N Roses is a rock band, right?”

“A rock band?” she questions in a hushed tone. “Like music made by rocks? Oh, Maud will be so happy once I tell her about them! Think she’d like a shirt like this one for Hearth’s Warming Eve?”

I become oddly tempted to get her take on “heavy metal” music, but decide to cut to the matter at hand. Namely, the shirt on the yellow pegasus’ back.

“Look, Fluttershy, I have to ask…” I begin gamely enough.

She scoots along the carpet until she’s directly in front of me—head raised and expectant. I feel my heart give a lurch from the sight. Fluttershy had always been as cute as a button before, yet suddenly seeing her half-dressed in a shirt that didn’t belong to her made her even that much more adorable. Like a cat wearing tiny mittens or a dog trapped inside a homemade Christmas sweater.

“Yes, Anon-thony?” she asks sweetly, a faint twinkle in her eyes.

I grunt as my heart stops for a moment. I don’t bother correcting her.

“Why are you so interested in wearing my shirts? This has got to be like… what? The twelfth time you’ve put one on? Wouldn’t a shirt just get in the way of your wings?”

Fluttershy glances toward the two small lumps underneath the shirt. “Oh, I don’t mind that all that much. Truth be told, I never really was all that much a fan of flying.”

“Not too hot? Too itchy, perhaps? Ponies don’t tend to wear clothes around here all that often—unless, of course, there’s a fancy ball in Canterlot or Rarity starts singing randomly.”

She shakes her head. “Actually, wearing one of your shirts leaves me at a perfect temperature. I’m the type that always finds the wind outside a bit too cold or the air conditioning inside too high.” Using her hooves, she gives herself a tight bear hug, pressing the fabric of the shirt tight against her. “But when I’m wearing this, it’s just perfect! And maybe in the winter I could even start wearing some of your sweaters or your coat. Do you have any scarves in your closet I could wear?”

Gingerly, I tap a finger against my chin. “You do realize that if you started wearing my clothes around town, everyone would start thinking we’re a couple. Right?”

“Well…” Fluttershy pauses to look down, absently rubbing a hoof into the carpet. “What’s so wrong about that?”

“For starters: we’re not a couple.”

She continues just staring at her hoof. “But we could be.”

“But we’re not.”

“But we could be.”

“But sadly, we’re not!”

That causes Fluttershy to growl deep within her throat, hissing under her breath, “Not with that attitude, mister.”

It’s clear what’s going on here. It’s cute, but also… not cute at the same time? Can I go with that? A tad creepy, perchance? Either way, I quickly start racking my brain in search of an easy solution. And one glance at my closet is all it takes.

“So you like wearing my clothes, do you?” I ask her openly, strolling toward my open closet.

She nods. “Yes, very much so.”

It takes me less than a minute to find the piece of clothing in mind; shoved near the back of the closet for good reason. “So you’d wear this around town if I asked you to?”

Fluttershy narrows her eyes as she reads the text on the shirt I’m holding. “Gas, ass, or grass—nobody rides for free.” She grimaces. “I guess I technically do eat grass sometimes.”

In frustration, I lob the joke shirt back into the closet. Then I grab the first thing I glimpse on the shelf and pop it atop my head. “So you’d wear this outside if I wanted you to?”

She raises a brow. “A bright pink cowboy hat?”

I tip the garish hat in her direction. “I got it as a gift from my weird cowboy friend back on Earth.”

That makes her smile goofily. “We all have that one weird cowboy friend, don’t we?”

I toss the hat like a Frisbee atop the other terrible shirt before taking a knee beside her, placing a delicate hand on her shoulder. “So you’d have worn both of those if I’d asked you to?”

Lightly, Fluttershy pulls at the Guns N Roses shirt she has on. “If you didn’t want me to wear this one for some reason, I would have. Although, I must say I like this one a whole lot more.” She giggles to herself. “Skull faces wearing top hats? Eating destruction? It’s like Discord put this shirt together!”

Her last little laugh is enough to break my insides into fragments. So, steeling myself as best I can, I give her shoulder a quick pat. “Alright, Fluttershy, here’s the deal. You can borrow a total of one of my shirts a day, as long as you have my permission. But it must come back in the exact same condition that it left this place.”

Fluttershy brings up two hooves to her face to gasp. “What about sweaters? Or socks? What do you think about ponies wearing socks, anyways, Anthony?”

Suddenly, the notion of ponies parading around in socks awakens something deep inside of me I had no idea existed at all. I see a damp, dark cave filled to the brim with jagged and sharp rock—and at its very core is a weak and frail creature that just begs to be let loose!

Yet I deny it, as I must.

Ponies wearing shirts is one thing. But socks?

Not yet. But perhaps soon.

Back in the real world, I ruffle Fluttershy’s mane with my fingers. She leans into my hand and closes her eyes as I do. “Let’s see how you handle shirts first. You bring enough of these back in one piece and I’ll see what I can do.”

She surprises me with a hug, wrapping as much of her little body around mine as she can. In response, I pat her on the back in the most “brother-sister” way I can until she lets go.

“Thanks, Anon!” she says happily, before flinching. “I mean Anthony! Anthony!” Then she bolts out from the room, whispering to herself what I can only describe as her self-imposed mantra, “One step at a time, Fluttershy! Today his shirt… tomorrow his pants!”

Later that day, I changed all the locks in my house.

Windows included.

Author's Notes:

So this was basically written just to get my fingers moving again. At the moment, I'm deliberating between 3-4 larger projects and instead of doing any of them, I'm doing nothing at all. Hopefully, things'll get back on track soon!

Thanks to Flutterpriest for being cool with this. (He hasn't read this, actually, so he might not be anymore. Who knows? )