As the three of you tread down the dirt road back to the farm, the sour expression you can feel burning into the back of your head never ceases. You pin your ears as another sound of discontent reaches them, a glob of mud whizzing by in your peripheral as Sweetie Belle continues in vain to whisk and toss the collected grime in her mane.
You’d been apologizing since it happened, but nothing you said had been improving her mood at all. Not only that, but she made sure that you and Scoots could hear her assorted grunts and groans of displeasure all the way home.
It wasn’t like you made her fall or anything. She wouldn’t have anything to complain about if she just watched where she was going.
So what if the ground was still a little wet from the rain? Hiding in your treehouse for the millionth time in recent memory would have been a much worse fate than getting your hooves a little dirty! There was a whole world out there, and it hadn’t been this sunny in almost a week. Heck, it hadn’t been sunny period in almost a week.
’A little bit’a nature never hurt nopony, right?’ as your sister would always say.
Sweetie didn’t agree, and her constant reminders were starting to weigh on you.
“Look, ah said I was sorry! It ain’t even so bad. C’mon, we’ll be back in no time. We just gatta’ get you under the rinsin’ spigot and you’ll be good as new! Then we can go back, grab the ball an’—”
”I am NOT going back out there!” Sweetie snaps, your attempt at optimism rolling off of her. “If we just stayed in the treehouse like I said, my mane wouldn’t be messed up in the first place!”
She hadn’t spoken actual words in quite a while, and judging from her tone she’d been saving that little retort in her head for when the time was right. Your good sense reminds you that she is technically correct, but that only helps the frustration slowly overpowering your guilt to grow.
“Well… If ya’ll weren’t bein’ such a COLT all the time, we wouldn’t need to go back home at all,“ you mutter.
Two pairs of hooves plod up behind you and then draw in to your right, Sweetie Belle’s frowning face framed in a mane full of sun-dried dirt and muck. Before she can toss what is sure to be a fully-loaded barb that launches you both into long, drawn out argument, the third member of your party blocks your view of each other.
”H-Hey, look, we’re already here!” Scootaloo says. “Look, we’ll all get cleaned up, open that bag of Wonderbolt haychips I stashed away at the clubhouse, and by the time we’re all done Sweetie should be dry. C’mon, I’m hungry. You guys are hungry too... right?”
The off-orange filly smiles nervously, whipping her head back and forth between the both of you. Stubbornness shining through, you wait for Sweetie to concede her anger first – which she does with a reluctant nod. You parrot the gesture, and the issue is dropped.
For now.
Now walking shoulder to shoulder, the three of you cross deeper into the apple farm, passing up the clubhouse on the way. Your destination was beyond, to the water taps on the side of the barn. That was where the baskets of apples were rinsed after they were sorted.
Judging by the pink-peach color of the clouds and much of the horizon, you were probably coming up on four or five PM. The nearing evening wasn’t doing much for the humidity, but at least the raw heat was starting to let up. As Scootaloo educated the both of you on how her extra-cheesy hay chips were superior to regular hay chips on the merit that they had been pre-formed into goggle-wearing Pegasus shapes, you idly recall that your folks should be wrapping up the picking right about now, and wonder if you might meet up with one of them there.
No sooner had that thought crossed your mind did the three of you come around the south side of the barn and spot him.
The sight causes you and Sweetie to pause instinctively, the combination of your sudden stop and the sound of water hitting the ground quieting Scootaloo’s talking and drawing her gaze as well. Just ahead of you the freshly wet faucets glimmer in the fading sun, and standing above them is Anon the Human, clutching a small wooden bucket.
The first time you’d seen him was in your kitchen with Twilight Sparkle, but you didn’t get much of a look at the time. If you remembered right, the lavender mare was trying to convince your sister to let him work for them.
Now, Big Mac working on the farm was one thing; he was family, and he was expected to help out around the farm however he could, even if it wasn’t technically proper. Some colt just wandering in from the outside, though? That was gonna’ take A LOT of fancy book-talk to accomplish with your folks. More than even Twilight was capable of.
So, when talking didn’t work, Twilight called in a favor.
That recent ‘Apple-Slug’ infestation she helped clear up had won her some points on the farm. Enough, apparently, for your sister and granny to finally relented.
’I reckon It don’t matter none,’ you remember Applejack telling you , her expression betraying her feelings of uneasiness. ‘Alls I had to do was accept. It’s supposed to rain all this week if’in Dash can be trusted. All that summer heat’n rain, and mud on the hooves? He’ll be runnin’ on home in no time, just you wait’.
Well, there had been much waiting this week, and even though the rain was gone, they still had no shortage of stallions in the orchard. In that time it wasn’t strange to hear Granny and AJ speaking in harsh whispers when you and Mac were just out of earshot, presumably about your continuing hire.
You don’t really get the hullabaloo. Sure, it was weird for a boy to want to carry heavy baskets and knock on trees and what-not, but colts were just weird.
Really weird – and not in a quirky, funny way either.
Like, just recently, the boys in your class had started to talk funny and put funny things on themselves, little baubles or fetlock bracelets. It didn’t stop at cosmetics.
Their withers and necks were getting thicker. Their faces were becoming sharper, eyes more noticeable and piercing. They walked with a slight sway in their step, which always threatened to draw your eye to their rounded, perky, cutie-mark splashed flanks.
Sometimes they did this thing where they leaned on their hip and bit at their lower lip while looking up at you, completely oblivious to how they were making you feel antsy, and anxious, and short of breath, and scared, and-and…
And a myriad of other complex feelings you didn’t like to think about too hard. More and more of which were making themselves known as you and your three friends stared at the creature just ahead.
He always wore so many clothes, but at the moment his top half had been stripped away, and you could see much more of his strange, bare body. The water from the bucket he’d just turned over his head tumbled in subtle, ebbing waves down his wide, bare chest and barrel. He sighs coltishly from the sensation, and your breath catches.
Was it normal to hear your own heart? Could Sweetie and Scoots hear it? Could HE hear it?
The cool water comes rolling down his body again, the sound from the splash bouncing off of the side of the barn and dancing out into the orchard.
You notice that your mouth is slightly open and slam it shut like a vice.
He gasps from the cool shock against his skin, then rounds out the sound with a relieved chuckle as he trails his lithe claws through his mane and down his neck. You swallow as the water travels low and darkens the clothing on his bottom half. The band that held up the rest of his clothing sags slightly under the added weight of the liquid, revealing another scant inch of his hips and lower abdomen as well as the beginning mound of his flanks.
While thoughts of the like are no longer uncommon, the sudden and unnatural desire you feel to see what he might look like without his annoying, obstructive clothing is still mildly frightening to you.
Frightening, and familiar.
You still remember that Wednesday evening when Twist pulled the three of you aside after class with the promise of showing you ‘something rad’, something she’d witnessed her mother hiding under a box in her closet. The item of intrigue was a Playfilly Magazine, an object that you’d only heard of in legends and the sidelong whispers of smirking adults.
Every page was painted with doughy-eyed, breathless young stallions.
Stallions splayed out on beds, lying on the grass or up against walls, their manes fanned out behind them. Their open, inviting posture gave you an eyeful of their colt parts, all of which were swelled and purposely presented to the reader via strange or form-tight clothing. Sometimes they were even soaking wet like Anon was right now.
While at the time the much-awaited ‘books only for big mares and stallions’ had been brushed off with nervous chuckles and declarations of anti-climax from yourself and the crusaders, the feelings they stirred in you were never fully shaken, and in fact were making their appearance again right now.
Your head swivels slowly to the right to examine your two friends, both of whom you note have remained just as silent as you for the last few… seconds? Minutes?
Scootaloo’s eyes are trained ahead and shining with what you can easily make out as subdued excitement, the edges of her mouth neutral but threatening to twitch upwards. Sweetie is much harder to read. Her head is lowered just slightly, and she’s biting at her cheek. The knees of her legs all turn inward just slightly.
She almost looks ashamed.
In the blink of an eye the white filly whips her head around to face you, her eyes widening and her face burning just enough for you to notice.
”O-Oh! Uhh… Hey girls? What’s up?”
The human’s voice causes you and Sweetie to jump slightly, your heads whipping back around in surprise. Scootaloo opens her mouth to speak and, upon failing, pales slightly and turns her head to either side, silently begging for somepony to do something with her eyes. A rush of information comes flooding into your mind, scenes of Applejack scowling or even lecturing mares about ‘leering at innocent stallions’ when the family were out at the market with Big Mac.
“A-Ah’m, uhh… we were just, uhh… we weren’t, uhh… “
A voice to your far right cuts you off, the unmistakable squeak of Sweetie Bell drowning out your feeble attempts to properly speak.
”M-… My mane,” she manages softly.
”Your…? Oh… Oh yeah. Haha, yeah I see what you mean, ” the human replies. His five-pointed hooves grip the waistband of his pants and tug them up to a slightly more reasonable position, and he motions to her. “C’mere.”
There’s a pause, the cream-colored filly’s eyes widening.
”Ah… m-me?” Sweetie replies dumbly, unmoving.
You cringe slightly, but you don’t really know why.
”Yeah, you. C’mere,” he repeats, motioning again.
All you can do is watch as the muddy-maned filly anxiously trots up the large creature, the sun at his back causing the water bordering his skin to glisten just enough to reveal a faint and alien musculature that you hadn’t observed quite as well before.
The human leads Sweetie Belle several paces away and then kneels, delicately supporting her head as he cranes it under the dripping nearby pipe. With a twist of the wheel a stream of cool water falls from the pipe and mingles into the mess of mane and human claws.
Anon methodically weaves his tentacle-y hooves through Sweetie’s sopping multicolored mane, smoothly combing the dirt and small twigs out with patient precision. Sweetie winces subtly each time his feelers graze her small horn or ring around the back of her stiff ears, but her eyes never once close. She stares upwards eagerly, his wet mane framing and dangling from his face as he examines her with a mix of concentration and gentleness, completely unaware of how unabashedly the young pony was drinking him in.
”Pretty hot, huh?” he says.
Sweetie’s face burns, turning to embarrassment and momentary fear; she doesn’t dare reply.
”I wasn’t expecting it to be so warm today. Normally I would’ve just rinsed off at home, but this just looked so inviting!”
Anonymous smiles and dips his head, affixing his eyes back on her.
“The water feels nice, right?”
Relief pools in your chest as the cream filly nods – a little too fast – in affirmative, mumbling a reply that was just out of you and Scootaloo’s range of hearing. Soon most if not all traces of impurity are run out of your friend’s mane, and the creature stands. The reintroduction of his full height is a strange mix of comforting and intimidating.
”Th-thanks y-… Thank you. Uhh, sir… “ Sweetie stumbles pitiably, her face still prickling as she moves to rejoin you and Scootaloo.
”Naw, don’t mention it, ma’am,” he replies with a flash his teeth, clearly amused by her formality.
As your fellow crusader returns to you side you come to a startling realization.
Move; you can move too.
Your entire body twitches unnaturally as you remember what it’s like to not be a stiff, creepy pony that stares at gentlecolts without them knowing. What would AJ say if she saw what you were just doing?
Anon reaches down and reclaims his things, slinging the pale in his left hand over his shoulder by the handle and gripping what appeared to be his top-clothes in his right at his side. Sweetie Bell rounds you, placing you between her and the human, her face breaking into a dreamy grin.
”It’s gettin’ a little late. You girls gonna be alright getting home?” the human asks.
”Uhh, y-yeah! We’ll be fine! We’re having a sleepover at the clubhouse tonight!” Scootaloo replies, seemingly regaining her composure.
”That so? Alllll the way out there in the orchard?” he questions, turning his upper body towards the CMC clubhouse. Its chipping paint just within view between the trees in the distance.
“That’s pret-ty brave of you,” he enunciates, turning back to the three of you with a reserved grin.
Whenever he speaks his words hit your ears just right, in just the right way. Even the slight tease in his tone rolls off of you and draws you further in.
Is this… is this flirting? With the effect it was having on you, this HAD to be what flirting was. The deep, smooth tone of his voice is a contrasting battle of confident, playful and fatherly that sets him apart from the colts at school in your mind.
He had the unmistakable aura of an experienced, adult stallion. Just like the ones in that magazine.
The longer he looks down at you, the more you want to hide your face, curl up into a ball – anything to escape the raw sureness of his presence.
”Yeah… we’re REALLY brave… “ Scootaloo confirms dimly, the inelegance of her return drawing you out of your confidence spiral somewhat. She doesn’t seem to notice what she just said. The orange filly’s eyes are slightly lidded as she returns Anon’s gaze, the wings folded into her sides ruffling slightly.
”… Uhhhh-huh. Welp, you have fun then. I gatta’ head back inside and wrap things up with Applejack,” he says, turning away and juggling the pale in his feelers as he replaces his top-clothes.
Your eyes are drawn low against your will, tracing the fine outline of his flanks as his wet bottom-clothes cling to them. When you lift your eyes again you are startled to find his staring back at you over his shoulder.
Oh heck, why does the air on your face suddenly feel so cool?
He saw you looking. He definitely saw you looking. Aw apples, say something!
“Ah-uhh… “
SOMETHING ELSE!
”You girls aren’t gonna get into any mischief while you’re all alone, right?” He grins over his shoulder, waiting for your answer.
Horseapples, he definitely saw you.
”Nuh-uh.“ replies the orange crusader.
”No, sir, we won’t,“ replies the white, drawing circles in the dirt with her hoof.
Okay, you haven’t said anything of consequence ‘till now; this is it! Show him how marely and confident you are, like your big sis!
You straighten your legs and puff out your meager tuft, adopting a face that you hoped to Celestia looked cool and confident and, finally, full of hope:
“Y-you too!” you squeak, and your developing voice cracks noticeably through your stutter.
AAAHHHH! Apple me right in the consarnin’ APPLES!
You almost choke, your face scrunching up as your body language instantly devolves from confident to the opposite. Your face burns as you hear the distant sound of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon’s chesty, mean-spirited guffaws echoing endlessly in your head. You SWEAR that Sweetie and Scoots whip their heads around to face you, but you can only judge through your peripheral since you don’t dare look up from the ground. For as much as you mentally flinched each time they said something odd, what you said easily took the grand prize in awkward.
Each millisecond ticks away individually in your head; you aren’t breathing, and a tightness has dominated your chest. You want to open your mouth to recover, but the words won’t come.
Thank goodness he has plenty to spare.
”Well, alright, you take care then,” he hums simply, and then turns to leave.
Your flub doesn’t even break his stride, as if he was completely immune to the hay flying out of your saddlebags. Like not even you, at your powerlevel, could shake his confidence. The filled-out human male turns the corner a moment later, leaving you alone with the water faucets and your two accomplices. Silence dominates for a long while, and you’re in no state to break it.
You can only silently hope that your slip would be ignored by your friends in the aftermath. From the look on Scootaloo’s face, it seems as though your prayers might not be so out of the question.
”Wow!” she exclaims, turning on you and Sweetie.
The volume of her voice makes you jump, and the ability to lift your head is suddenly restored.
”What a bombshell!” the orange filly yell-whispers, just soft enough to escape clarity from inside the barn – you hope.
”Yes, he was rather… rather… “ Sweetie Belle responds distantly, continuing her hobby of circling the dirt with her hoof.
”Yeah, and he had his thingies all over you! How did it feel? Were they soft? They looked soft… “
Sweetie closes her eyes and smiles goofily, shrugging occasionally as she feeds you vague, non-committal answers. The ridge in the ground under her right hoof grows deeper by the moment.
”You’re so lucky! Dang, it’s too bad I wasn-… A-Aw! My hooves!”
Your eyes are drawn to Scootaloo’s forehooves as she lifts them, showcasing the flecks of dried mud caking them to the fetlock.
”I was gonna wash them off anyways – I coulda’ asked him to help! Jeez, jeez!” The little filly bounces on her hooves, an almost pained expression on her face as she utters her further ‘drat’s and ‘dang’s.
You idly peer down at you own stompers, examining the scuffs of dirt, leaves and dry mud, wondering what it might feel like to have his fleshy grabbers run up and down your legs. Heck, you wonder what it might feel like to have them comb through your wet mane, petting you around the ears and head like he’d done with Sweetie…
A short-lived tingle runs down your spine.
Colts are weird.