//------------------------------// // Fluttershy is hiding under your bed (Hoopy McGee) // Story: Fimfic Authors Are In Your Bed // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Fluttershy is hiding under your bed Hoopy McGee   Your life recently has been beyond crazy. Work has been… well, work. Customer service is always going to suck, especially when you’re dealing with a combination of idiotic customers and aggressively lazy management. But your home, which used to be your sanctuary from all the madness, has recently become infested.   No, not with roaches. You may not be keep the place obsessively clean, but you’re clean enough that pests like that aren’t a problem. No, the creatures you’re having trouble with are much larger, much cuddlier, and much more sanity-threatening.   Your home has been infested with ponies. All of whom tend to show up in your bed. Exclusively on Mondays, for some reason. As if regular Mondays weren’t stressful enough.   Maybe that’s why you find yourself standing in front of your doorway this particular Monday evening, your keys in your hand but your door still shut. You have no idea what you’ll find this time, and you’re not particularly eager to find out.   Your pathetic excuse for a dinner stirs unquietly in your stomach. No Panda Express today. Instead, you had picked up a wholly unsatisfying sub, even though you’d been craving fried rice all day. You simply couldn’t risk another fortune cookie.   As you stand there with the keys in your hand, the knowledge that you actually blamed the fortune cookie, even subconsciously, slowly filters its way into your awareness. Snorting with disgusted laughter, you shake your head. As crazy as ponies in your bed might be, blaming the whole thing on a Panda Express fortune cookie is just… silly.   You brace yourself and open the door. As you step in, you flick on the lights. So far, so good. Nothing seems out of place, and there isn’t a pony in sight. The lack of mysterious glowing orbs is also a huge bonus. You walk cautiously inside, trying to make as little noise as possible.   It doesn’t take long to clear your kitchen and living room. With the door to your bathroom wide open, it’s clear that there are no ponies in there, either. There’s only one place left to check.   The bedroom door seems a lot more foreboding than it should, considering that it’s just a cheap hollow-core door with a slightly-dented brass-colored knob. Even so, it takes you a moment to gather the courage to open it.   The door swings open, and your eyes immediately dart towards the bed. You blink several times, almost unable to believe what you’re seeing. Your bed, though still unmade from this morning, appears to be completely unoccupied.   You let out a breath you hadn’t been aware that you were holding as you sigh in relief. Then your nerves wind back up. It’s a trap, some instinct warns you. You reluctantly agree with the instinct: you aren’t that lucky.   It’s not as if it’s a large bedroom. There’s nothing hiding on the other side of the door. Your closet, though frighteningly disorganized, is completely pony-free. The side of the bed you can’t see from the hallway is also devoid of ponies.   Tension flees from your body and your shoulders sag as you realize that, for the first time this week, you don’t have to worry about random ponies hogging your bed. Or trying to light it on fire. Or banishing it to a different dimension. And, just for a moment, you allow yourself the luxury to think that you’re done with the weirdness.   Feeling exhausted, you close your eyes and collapse onto your pony-free bed.   squeak   Your eyes snap open. You don’t remember your bedsprings ever squeaking before. A memory surfaces… something about individually-wrapped bed springs in a high-quality mattress and box spring, according to the salesman who sold this bed to you.   You paid a lot of good money for this bed, because it was important to you to have a comfortable (and, fortunately, fireproof) place to sleep. This is a bed that shouldn’t ever squeak. In fact, you remember the feeling of unease you felt at the salesman waggling his eyebrows when he told you that even “vigorous activity” wouldn’t be enough to cause this bed to make noise.   You move experimentally, just to test a theory.   squeak   A sense of dreamlike unreality washes over you. There was one place you hadn’t checked when you investigated the room. Moving slowly, you rearrange yourself on the bed, lowering your head and arm over the side. Taking a deep breath, you pull up the bedsheets while simultaneously sticking your head down to look under the bed.   There’s something there. Soft curves hidden in shadows, while a pair of large, teal eyes stare back at you.   For a long moment, you and the pony under your bed stare at each other. As the hammering in your chest starts to abate, a weary resignation takes you over.   “Hi,” you say. “Why don’t you come out from under there?”   squeak says the pony.   “Look, I’m not going to hurt you. But you can’t be comfortable under there.”   The pony blinks, then looks away. It nods and begins pushing itself out from under your bed. You get out of bed and stand up, making sure the bed is between you and the side where timid pony is coming out. Some time passes, enough for you to open your mouth to ask if everything is okay, when the top of the pony’s head starts to poke up on the other side of your bed.   At first, all you see are the tips of a pair of ears. Apparently, the coat of this one is a soft yellow. The pink mane, looking impossibly soft, appears next, rising over the side of your bed like a bashful moon. Finally, a pair of large, beautifully bright teal eyes look at you nervously from the other side of the bed.   You realize two things. The first is, the pony this time is obviously Fluttershy. The second is that you just might be having a cuteness-induced heart-attack.   “Hrng,” you say, doubling over and clutching your chest.   “Oh, my,” Fluttershy says, looking alarmed. “Are you alright?”   Fortunately, concern for your well-being seems to have snapped her out of shy mode. Unfortunately, this means that she has now reared up to put her forehooves on top of your bed. With her wings half-spread and a look of worry on her features, Fluttershy is now cuter than ever.   “Hrng!”   Before you have time to really register what’s going on, you find yourself kindly but firmly made to sit on the edge of your bed. Fluttershy darts out of the room, returning a moment later with a glass of water somehow balanced perfectly on top of her head.   “Here, drink this up and you’ll feel better,” Fluttershy says, stretching her head towards you. She has to keep her head level to keep the water from spilling, but she’s looking up at you through her long eyelashes. You quickly look away before you really do have a heart attack.   “Thanks,” you say as you take the water.   “You’re very welcome,” Fluttershy says. “I, um, also found some medicine. I think?” She jumps up on the bed and opens her wings. The bottles and tubes she’d been holding under them tumble onto the bed. “I don’t know what most of this is, but hopefully something here will help you.”   You glance at the pile of stuff on your bed. Apparently, Fluttershy just nabbed everything in your medicine cabinet without really looking. That would explain why your shaving cream was sitting there next to your mouthwash. Fortunately, she also grabbed some aspirin. Since that’s good for both headaches and for preventing heart attacks, you pop the bottle open and take a couple, chasing it with water.   “Thanks,” you say.   “You’re very welcome,” Fluttershy replies with a wide smile, apparently forgetting the “shy” part of her name for the moment. The smile lights her whole face up, and you let out another quiet “hrng” as you return her smile.   “I hope water is okay,” she says. “I couldn’t get you anything else, because it looks like your refrigerator has some fire damage.”   “Yeah. A different pony did that.”   “Oh.” Fluttershy frowns. It’s very cute, the way her ears fold back and her muzzle scrunches up. It occurs to you that it’s probably impossible for her to do anything without doing it cutely. “Well, that was very rude of them. Um. Sorry.”   “It’s okay,” you say, though of course it really isn’t. But it’s not like that’s Fluttershy’s fault, and some instinct you didn’t even know you had is working overtime in order to not upset her. “So, uh...”   Fluttershy’s ears fold down over her head. With the apparent crisis over, her shyness is starting to return. She looks down, running a forehoof over your bed sheets.   “You, uh…” You’re at a loss for a moment, finally blurting out the first thing that crosses your mind. “You want to go watch TV or something?”   Fluttershy looks up at you, tilting her head to one side and blinking in confusion (hrng). “What’s ‘TV’?” she asks.   Five minutes later, a fascinated Fluttershy is sitting on your couch, sipping on a glass of water and watching Animal Planet.   I guess there are worse ways to spend an evening you think to yourself from your nice comfy armchair.   A few hours later, Fluttershy falls asleep on your couch. You can’t help but smile at the sight as a warm feeling spreads through your chest. Not wanting to wake her, you go and get a spare blanket from the bedroom closet.   You spread the blanket gently over her. Fluttershy doesn’t wake, though she does snuggle down into the blanket with a happy smile on her face.   “Hrng,” you say softly, so as not to wake her. Then you go and get the first decent night’s sleep you’ve had in a while.