Happy's Day At Work
The sun shone in through the windows of Happy Ray’s house, illuminating his kitchen and breakfast table, with just a few specks of dust floating through the air, giving the whole room a perfectly relaxing, orange glow that coaxed Happy out of his sleepiness with extraordinarily gentleness.
Cupboards were opened, and condiments were placed on the table. Happy smiled to himself.
Perfectly sliced bread joined the condiments as Happy started humming to himself.
A glass, a jug of milk, and the rest of what was needed for a good breakfast followed. Happy’s humming was forming into a jaunty little tune.
He looked out the window, to see the pretty outline of the Fillydelphian suburb’s profile against the beautiful morning, with the tiny activities of sparrows hopping around and picking at the seeds that ponies in neighboring houses had left for them on their rooftops.
Happy sat back and enjoyed his breakfast. There was no coffee though. Happy didn’t need coffee.
After finishing his breakfast, Happy cleaned the table, the jovial humming coming back now that his mouth was no longer occupied.
He made sure that everything was in order before he left his apartment, the humming leaving with him, but the warmth and happiness that it exuded still permeated its walls and furniture, waiting to embrace Happy when he returned.
—
Happy trotted down the street towards the bookstore. It was a pretty large bookstore from what he was used to from being a colt, but it wasn’t very special by Fillydelphia standard.
He had moved here from the countryside. His mother had approved of this. While she said she’d miss him, she had said, not hinted, said, that maybe he’d have better luck in love in the city where there were more options available.
When she said that, Happy’s smile had remained the same around the mouth, but it fell a bit around his eyes, and he let out a sigh that he just managed to not seem too displeased.
He had hugged his parents, and left for Fillydelphia.
He hadn’t visited or talked as much with them lately, but that wasn’t entirely a bad thing, he thought.
Happy stopped humming as he neared his workplace, and slowed down to a walk, making sure he moved quietly. The streets hadn’t had much activity just yet, so he reasoned that his humming hadn’t bothered anyone. In the bookstore though, there would be ponies, who had other stuff to do than listen to him humming.
The door to the bookstore didn’t jingle as he entered, as the bell was still tied up. It was before opening time after all.
Papyrus stood behind the counter, looking down at some ledgers.
“Good morning,” Happy said. He took pride in his own voice. It was perfectly deep to not be either intrusive, or demand attention, just the way he preferred to conduct himself.
Still, that didn’t stop Papyrus from jumping slightly at his voice. Happy looked straight ahead though, and didn’t react to her being startled, making it seems like he hadn’t noticed her. He reasoned she’d prefer it that way.
“Oh, good morning,” she said.
Happy walked on, back into the employee-section of the store. There, Oaken Leaf was pulling on his shirt over his head, the type that all the employees wore.
He wasn’t usually here this early, but Happy didn’t read into it. He just grabbed his own shirt, and pulled it on him.
“Morning,” Oaken said.
“Morning,” Happy greeted happily.
“Wispy Page is late again, it seems,” Oaken noted.
He was referring to the petite pegasus mare, the only employee who wasn’t an earth pony, who despite her wings usually to come to work a few minutes late.
Happy shrugged. Wispy was indeed a little late most of the time, but Happy was usually here before Oaken. He didn’t make a note of either of those facts though. It didn’t bother him, as long as somepony opened the store, it didn’t matter, there wasn’t a lot of activity the first hour and a half anyway.
“Latest shipment unboxed yet?” Happy asked.
“No, I’m gonna do it now. You gonna man the floor?”
“Yep,” Happy said. He would’ve preferred to unpack the shipments, that was a pleasant job. Open boxes, look through orders, match with manifests, note down irregularities, place the books in an ordered manner, etc, all by himself, humming pleasantly and having pleasant thoughts about exciting stories in his head, or just philosophizing about life and the world and such, away from ponies.
He’d man the floor instead, but today was a good day, and he didn’t let this small, lost opportunity bother him.
So he walked out into the store, humming to himself again, but this time low enough that only he could hear it himself.
While standing with a hoof full of book on his back, sorting the shelves, Happy heard the bell jingle, but didn’t look up, since he was fairly certain it wasn’t a customer.
A small gust of wind swept over him, but he had placed the books so that they wouldn’t fall off.
“Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot!”
He was neck-deep into his work, but he knew who it was that touched down on the floor before he heard her voice.
“Am I late!?” Wispy asked, sounding a lot more panicked than Happy thought she should’ve.
She technically was late, and Happy thought it was strange that Wispy almost always was. It was by now a habit, and if she had a habit of coming in at this time, surely she could learn to get out of bed fifteen minutes earlier. It wasn’t Happy’s place to judge though, and it didn’t even bother him.
Besides, Oaken, the only pony who cared, was in shipping-and-receiving at the moment, and wouldn’t know how late she was. No customer had come in yet. This, coupled with how disproportionately upset she seemed whenever he acknowledged this ever-returning question, made Happy instead chose one of the countless calming questions he had come up with in his days.
“You haven’t missed anything,” he said, perfectly relaxed.
“Oh, good,” Wispy said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Good morning, by the way.”
“Good morning.”
—
“Excuse me? Hi,” a mare standing next to Happy said.
Happy turned his attention to the unicorn mare, giving her a professional smile and acknowledging nod. “Good morning,” he said. “How can I help you?”
She smiled a bit bashfully, which didn’t look at all unappealing with her pretty face, healthy looking mane, and sheening coat.
“Uh, yeah, I’m, uh… looking for some books on gardening,” she said.
Happy was an earth pony, and even in a city like Fillydelphia the stereotype about earth ponies and green hooves sometimes made itself known, but while he couldn’t truthfully say he didn’t know the first thing about gardening, he was less certain he knew the second thing.
Still, if nothing else he could help this customer with his familiarity of the store they were in.
“Certainly,” he said. “Those would be over here.”
They walked over to the isle in particular, and Happy faced the somewhat nervous mare, gesturing around him.
“I’m not an expert, but this is what we have on the subject,” he said.
“Oh, thank you,” the mare said. “Do you know any good ones to start with?”
Happy slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. I can ask my colleagues if they could help you find any that’s suitable for you,” he offered.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” the mare said, one of the books catching her eye. “Oh, my friend talked about this one,” she said, floating it up to her.
Happy smiled at her. “Glad to hear it, ma’am. Feel free to ask if you need anything else.”
“Oh. Uh, yes… thank you,” she said, her ears drooping a little bit.
Happy almost looked at her questioningly, but managed to just stop himself from asking, and instead give her an acknowledging nod before walking back to continue the sorting.
He did notice Papyrus and Wispy standing behind the counter, leaning on each other for balance as they giggled at either him or the unicorn mare, he couldn’t tell which.
Happy looked at them inquisitively, before shrugging and going back to work.
—
Happy was enjoying a glass of orange juice in the employee lounge. It was lunch, and Happy had a liberal amount of time to enjoy his meal considering how long the breaks were.
He leaned back, focusing on enjoying the little things in life, like how tasty a granola bar can be, and how he was free from so many worries that his coworkers were not.
See, all of Happy’s coworkers, in fact most of the ponies he knew, either were in, or were looking to put themselves in, a sort of never-ending fight against a strange, formless, and ever-shifting monster.
“No!” Papyrus breathed in response to what Wispy had said. “What happened then?”
Indeed, Wispy was talking about her particular fight with the monster right now.
“He just said he forgot!” Wispy said. “Can you believe that? Forget our anniversary!”
The monster was romance.
Wispy pulled herself up indignantly, which Happy found kind of impressive, seeing as how she had already done so twice by his count without slumping her posture even once yet. “Then he says that he was sorry!”
Happy silently thought that was a reasonable response to such an oversight.
Papyrus let out a strange noise; that odd mix between the start of a laugh and a little stutter that made it clear that she sympathized with Wispy’s indignance.
“Well, that’s just not gonna cut it!” Wispy said. “Just saying you’re sorry doesn’t prove anything.”
Happy’s eyes narrowed slightly in confusion, his gaze shifted about as he questioned the logic of this.
“You know how clueless stallions can be,” Papyrus said, comfortingly, leaning in a bit conspiratorily and patting Wispy on her hoof. “Just keep at it, he’ll learn eventually. He’s lucky to have a mare like you.”
Internally, Happy chuckled and put on a wry smile, taking another bite out of his granola bar.
“How about you, Happy?” Wispy asked, clearly smiling from the sound of her voice. A part of Happy’s brain froze, and leaned back to witness the slow chain reaction as the rest of his brain slowly reacted, followed by his jaw.
Happy’s eyes widened a bit, and glanced toward Wispy with a mix between curiosity and nervousness.
“I bet you’ve never forgotten an anniversary,” Wispy said, leaning slightly over the table, and resting her head on top of her hooves with half-lidded eyes.
Happy had not forgotten any anniversaries. Not the kind that Wispy was referring to at least. The risk of follow-up questions that Happy wasn’t looking forward to was in this situation impendingly high, and answering truthfully would just guarantee that.
Happy camouflaged his certainty of the answer by quickly going through all the possible anniversaries in his life, not just the ones Wispy was talking about, and seeing if he could remember missing any of them.
After a moment, Happy shook his head in short motions.
“Happy would never forget anything like that,” Papyrus said, kindly, and Happy couldn’t help but feel a little flattered from that remark, and not just because it seemed to move him further out of the woods. “Would you, Happy?”
Happy just smiled in an easy manner and shrugged at her.
“I just realized,” Wispy started. “I don’t even know if you’re single or not, Happy. You never talk about your special somepony. Do you even have anypony to have an anniversary with?”
Happy would’ve had trouble fighting down the desire to curse, if that wasn’t largely offset by that sinking feeling he got every time this talk loomed over him.
Putting on his bravest, most casual face, Happy shook his head. At least it wasn’t difficult to project that it wasn’t a big deal for him.
“Oh my. All the stallions we know are doing poorly on this front aren’t they?” Papyrus asked the table at large.
“Yeah, Oaken’s broken up with his fillyfriend,” Wispy said in a breathtaking display of sympathy.
Oaken, for his part, merely grunted behind his newspaper.
“Why don’t you have a fillyfriend though, Happy?” Wispy asked, suddenly with a healthy dose of concern in her voice.
Happy let out another internal sigh, this one bleeding out a bit into his actual posture. At least he could take this opportunity to study the flow of the upcoming conversation for the next time it occurred… like he always did.
Happy shrugged casually.
“Are you into stallions?” Papyrus asked, evenly.
Happy shook his head.
“So what gives?” Wispy said. “Haven’t found anypony who catches your fancy?”
That was, in a sense, the reason for it all. Happy nodded, a bit non-committally.
“But you like mares?” Papyrus asked.
Happy let out a long, uncertain sigh, as he looked at the table, contemplating on how best to answer this.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” Wispy asked, leaning in over the table again.
Happy nodded fairly. Saying no would be both false, and probably lead to all manners of complications.
“Pretty enough to ask me out on a date?” Wispy pushed.
The answer here would be negatory. Happy shook his head in a slightly apologetic manner at Wispy.
“Why not?” she asked, leaning back with a surprised look on her face. There was no hurt there yet, and Happy knew how to make sure there wouldn’t be any.
“You have a coltfriend,” he pointed out, surprising himself with the depth of his voice, not realizing that he hadn’t used it since morning.
“Oh my. He speaks,” Papyrus said, feigning shock, as Happy good-naturedly rolled his eyes at her.
“Oh, right,” Wispy said, a bit sheepishly. “But if I didn’t have a coltfriend, would you ask me out on a date then?”
This was getting complicated, and Happy spent at least two medium-long moments thinking of an answer. Already, it was gonna have to be a good one, sprinkled with an appropriate dose of around-the-watercooler-humor to explain the long pause.
Finally, he found a play that didn’t feel abysmal. He shrugged at Wispy, while smiling casually. “Probably figure you’d turn me down,” he said.
“Aaw,” Wispy and Papyrus cooed sadly in unison, and Happy smiled a bit, feeling that the conversation would soon be steered another direction.
“You’ve gotten turned down a lot?” Wispy asked, dashing Happy’s hopes. Even the disbelief in Wispy’s voice didn’t help.
Happy struggled to keep his lips from forming a thin line as he shook his head.
“So you’ve had a lot of fillyfriends then?” Wispy asked with a hint of approval, and Happy was again not happy about the direction this was going in.
Happy shook his head again, bracing himself.
“So, wait…” Wispy started, before slowing down and going double-checking the previous parts of the ongoing conversation. “You’ve never had a fillyfriend?” she asked in disbelief.
The room was quiet. Papyrus and Wispy were looking at Happy with slightly stunned expressions, and even Oaken had lowered the newspaper enough to look on with his eyebrows raised.
Happy let out a sigh, an external one this time, and shook his head.
“Why not?” Wispy immediately asked.
Happy bobbed his head and sighed in a frustrated way as he struggled for an answer that both had some truth in it, and didn’t complicate matters even more.
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to sound dismissive, shrugging a few times as he struggled to expand his answer in a good way. “Just… never had one. Don’t… want one.”
The other ponies around the table seemed frozen in place, their expressions not having changed since Wispy’s question.
“It’s not a big deal,” Happy said, shrugging.
That did it.
“Not a big deal!?” Wispy shouted, making Happy angle his ears away in discomfort. “I, if, what, wha… HUH!?”
Wispy seemed to stop and just stare at Happy. Papyrus glanced a bit worriedly at her, before turning to Happy.
“Why don’t you want a fillyfriend, Happy?” she asked.
Happy let out another sigh, before shrugging again. “Why would I want one? What’s in it for me? Or her for that matter?”
Papyrus looked at Happy with a sad expression. “Happy,” she started.
Happy rose up, and adjusted his shirt before heading out of the room to get back to work.
The three remaining ponies watched him go, before Oaken and Papyrus looked up at the clock on the wall.
There were still fifteen minutes left of the lunch break.
—
Happy walked home with a neutral expression on his face. The sun was still out, and that helped a bit, but the effects from the lunch break still lingered, the joy from his usual leisure time activities just felt a bit… muted.
He knew it would pass however. He finished dinner, cleaned himself off, and by the time he was lying in his bed, he was almost perfectly back to normal.
Although, the romantic subplot of the adventure book he had been enjoying the last few nights did stand out a bit more to him than it had previously.
Happy paused reading, and looked up at his room at large as he contemplated romance.
The books in his shelf, works of fiction, were fantasies. In fantasies, what happens is what you want to happen. The heroes and heroines struggles against adversity, and then they overcome, making the victory all the more satisfying.
It was the same with romantic fiction. The ponies encountered obstacle after obstacle to their romance, and in the end, love conquers all.
Happy nodded to himself, closed the book, turned off the light beside the table, and snuggled into his pillow.
Romantic love was the stuff of fairy tales. If it actually happened to actual ponies, why would they bother fantasizing about it working out?
With that, Happy fell asleep. Alone, and content.
—
It was a good day. Happy had been unboxing shipments the whole morning, quietly, away in his little corner, being productive without bothering anypony.
Now he was having lunch. A wonderfully tasty set of lemon muffins, not bothering anypony here either.
“Hey, Happy,” Wispy suddenly said.
Happy took a deep, internal breath. This didn’t have to mean that he was bothering anypony, it might just be a casual question about… where to find a good hardware store nearby or something. He looked questioningly at Wispy.
“So I have this marefriend, Wafer Roll, who doesn’t have a coltfriend.”
Happy’s head slumped.
“Oh come on! Just hear me out.” Wispy insisted.
Happy lifted his head and looked at her patiently.
“So you’re interested?”
Happy shrugged, then simply shook his head.
Wispy looked at Happy with a highly skeptical look. “You do have a fillyfriend don’t you? You just don’t want to say.”
Happy shook his head, focusing on his muffins again.
“I can’t believe this,” Wispy said after a while, then turned to the other ponies around the table. “What do you guys think?”
“Everypony needs somepony to love, Happy,” Papyrus said, earning a skeptical look from Happy. “Come on. You don’t know if you like it if you don’t try it.”
Happy wasn’t convinced of that. When he was a colt, there were plenty of foodstuff he had decided he didn’t like before he tasted it, and he had been right almost every time.
“What do you think, Oaken?” Wispy said.
“It’s not everyday you get this kind of offer,” he noted.
“Right?” Wispy said, triumphantly. “It’d be really rude to just dismiss her outright. Besides, she’s really pretty. Not as pretty as me, but still.”
That sounded sketchy to Happy. If you couldn’t outright dismiss other ponies’ offers of romance, you could find yourself in a lot of unwelcome situations… like this one. Wispy, and apparently her friend, being pretty ponies, should sympathise with that.
“Come on! You wanna go through your whole life not being with anypony?” Wispy insisted.
Happy simply shrugged and nodded.
Papyrus put on her most kindly smile. “Do you really not want anypony to know what it’s like to be in a relationship with such a wonderful stallion such as yourself?”
Happy snorted skeptically at that, but still smiled at her in response.
“I’m serious. Just try it,” Papyrus insisted.
Happy simply shook his head.
“Just one date,” Wispy insisted.
Happy shook his head again.
“Alright, tell you what. You go on one date with Wafer Roll, and I won’t bring this up again,” Wispy said.
Happy leaned back into his seat. The notion that it’s best to rip of bandages all at once was always kinda dumb to him. Happy was smart enough to let bandages soak in warm water before carefully removing them.
Then again, he figured that he might not be smart enough to come up with the warm water-equivalent to his situation.
After a long pause, Happy slumped his head in defeat.
Wispy let out a happy squeak, smiling widely and clapping her hooves together.
“Yes! Come on, let us at least hear you say it. Will you go out on a date with Wafer Roll?”
“... Sure,” Happy said.