'Silk is like love.'
Spike wondered where he had first heard those words. The ribbon knot was snug above the base of his tail, and the loop around his neck was warm and neatly settled. The apron clung to him like a song half-remembered.
"Perhaps from Rarity?" he mused as he softly smoothed wrinkles from the front. The heart, pink and proud on the chest, was round and full of color as he twirled once. The fluff at the base floated and settled. His smile widened a little more.
With a sharp nod to himself, he closed the box before him, and then slid it under Twilight's bed. If there was an observer they would have noted the careful claw-drafted letters on the top spelling out 'Spike's Aprons.’ If said observer were even keener they would have noted the proud blush on the fair dragon's muzzle and the slight hop in his step as he attended to his daily chore.
***
There was a new monster accosting the world. Twilight had rattled off some magical dictum and fled through the door with her five friends in tow to face the horror. Spike watched the dust settle from their departure with a soft sigh. He never mentioned it, but he liked being alone at the library some days.
A patter of footsteps retreated up the stairs as he decided today is a day for blue. The box of his hidden pleasure was removed, and as he shushed Owlowiscious' contentious hoot (the owl knows nothing of fashion nor aprons) he lifted out the garment of today's revelry.
It was a precociously lacy ensemble of ruffles and ribbons with a simple striped pocket where a heart rests on its sister. Spike's smile was lush and wide as he slide it over his scales and danced a little circle with the blue ribbon apron. His face was flushed with pleasure and his eyes were alight with glee.
'Silk is like love.'
***
Red held a secret. It hid his subtle lies.
With a sharp utilitarian cut and a simple theme of ‘kiss the cook’, it exuded masculine bravado and pride. The laces were sturdy and rough, the white of its canvas splattered by meals of ages past. Simple and straight-forward was its nature, and it lived it well.
It was the one he kept beneath his pillow, away from his sister’s prying eyes. Unbeknownst to her was his guilty pleasure of running the rough fabric across his underbelly and feeling it make his scales grow hot and his breath sharp with pleasure till he…
He washed it every night after he got a little too heated. He would scrub it fervently with his face reddened in dreaded recall. One day he feared being caught… and it excited him too.
The red was his fourth in line of favorite.
***
They were twins to each other; the black and the white. No-one had ever seen him wear either, though his dream the night after spent in red’s bliss were modelled in either of their apparel. His heart hammered just holding them. The two aprons were his prized second and third.
The white was faux-leather, rich and spice-like in its scent. The straps were looped with silver and studded. The entire thing was comparable to Rarity’s idea of what a fashionably questionable butcher might be privy to. Spike’s claws slid across the surface of it as he tried and failed to suppress a shiver.
The black was a shining mass of rolling patterns and whirls. Shamanic and exotic, it sighed whenever he so much as brushed its gold-threaded tassels or the rope-like belt of its laces. He felt his mouth go dry as it sat there beneath his palm.
He wore them in secret. When his heart ached for attention or lost in gray depression, he slid either on and felt the world fade behind the suggestive white or the royal black and he would leave sated and light-hearted.
They were his salve from long weeks of Twilight’s shenanigans or Rarity’s aloof smile.
But they paled in comparison to her.
To ‘silk’.
***
The pony who Spike procured his lusted clothing from was a simple mare. Though she had her duties, she never once forgot Spike’s glee at the first bit of clothing he had received. It was when he had decided to care for the ever distracted and kitchen-inept Twilight. Though time had passed and his taste in aprons had varied, Princess Celestia alway sent him a new one every year, each more delightful and risque than prior. He loved her for it.
Though fashion varied, nothing surpassed the fire of the first love. He unwrapped her from the bottom of the box. Soft paper was unfolded, slowly revealing her.
Silk.
Like love.
She was a soft cream, light and airy. The scent of summer flowers and cinnamon wafted from her as her wrinkles faded away unaided. She settled like a whisper about him and Spike suddenly felt sleek, wild, and beautiful.
His heart hammered in his chest. He felt his lips purse as he tried to contain a soft croon as the sheer fabric caressed his scales. His eyelids fluttered and he slumped forward with his tail unconsciously lifted high. He felt a fire in his belly, so similar to and yet hotter than any breath he had ever made. A heat suffused the area between his legs, and with a whimper he pressed the cloth between them. He gasped.
All was pleasure and silk.
He wasn’t sure if he cried out. His every limb ached, and he felt alive with something close yet beyond his own understanding. The floor was wet and smelled of brimstone and raw fish. His sight wavered in and out of focus as the first apron, the one Twilight had given him all those years ago, wrapped about him like a mother’s embrace.
A careful viewer would have noticed the ragged patches and crude stitching across the face of the old apron. They would have spotted how the way the young drake slept in its confines stretched the already aged fabric. They would have divined that another set of sewing would be needed when he awoke.
He smiled gently in his sleep as he pulled it a little closer. An innocuous tag stuck out from the back; in faint ink was the phrase ‘80% cotton’.
Still, love was like silk.