Hey, Filly. Did You Use My Shampoo?
Author's Note
What's written in Italics are Pharynx's thoughts and past memories.
Hey, Filly. Did You Use My Shampoo?
Party Bug,
Incase you're wondering, yes, you're in my apartment and no, you weren't seduced in any way. Last night, you were drunk and I had to carry your inebriated butt here by myself, all the way from Pinkie Pie's party. Which is funny in an ironic way because I had to drag you there in the first place. Remember? She threw a party to celebrate the return of her friends from a tough friendship mission over in Hayseed Swamp. Ringing any bells?
Anyway, I thought you'd be more responsible than to get so plastered! You surprised me so, Party Bug.
I cleaned you up while you were out of it and don't get any ideas, I bat for the same team! By the time you read this, I'll be at the marketplace and, don't worry, I'll bring home some apples. Feel free to leave anytime, if you want to, but you should shower first. You'll be hungover. A nice shower will do wonders. Help yourself to tea or coffee or whatever I have left in the kitchen.
-Agent SD
P.S. — Don't worry, you didn't go on a love sucking rampage while you were drunk. You did accidentally got yourself a marefriend. I'd be worried about that.
Pharynx groaned.
Waking up to the sound of whirring fan in semi-familiar surroundings with a splitting headache and a note folded onto his face was definitely not the best way to start off his Saturday morning.
His head felt like it was burning up from the inside out and was being drilled into with a unicorn's horn at the same time. His mouth was dry and hot, and a bad taste lingered on his tongue. A sick yet hollow feeling existed in his stomach. The couch was too short in length for his larger body and because he slept in cramped conditions, every muscle, bone, and limb now felt like it'd been compacted.
To top off his wonderful morning, his hooves are blue. In fact, his whole body seems to be blue.
He groaned again. How could he have let this happen? He'd always been a responsible drinker; he rarely consumed alcohol, and even when he did, he severely limited himself to only a pint, not enough to even get him tipsy. He took every precaution to not completely give in to the temptation of alcohol.
His going over the proverbial edge last night in spite of his overly precautious ways was just another example of fate playing him like a cheap deck of cards. Again.
"I'm never drinking anything with alcohol in it again. Not even cough syrup." He muttered those words out loud, hoping that hearing them would allow them to sink in because clearly, they hadn't before.
Rolling sideways off the living room couch, Pharynx paused, convinced himself the room was not spinning nor was it filled with standard issue weapons given to S.M.I.L.E. agents in every nook and cranny, then made his way to where he vaguely remembered the bathroom to be located. The hangover remedies would have to wait—that shower was the first step toward recovery he was willing to take.
Sweetie Drops' bathroom was small in comparison to the one he faintly remembered last night... Or was that a pool? Hopefully, nopony jumped in.
He looked in the mirror to see somepony he recognised as Minuette. That explains why I'm blue. He undid his disguise in a green flash, before launching himself into the stall and cranked up the shower to its full potential.
Ah, glory and paradise.
She was right, the shower was doing wonders. The mostly hot water rained down on his back like a massage, relaxing every taut muscle and nerve. The ill feeling evaporated with the droplets and the overall presence of the previous night's party no longer lingered on him. He inhaled the steam and felt the cloudiness in his head beginning to clear, though not completely—he was sure some tea would fix that, though.
Pharynx finally opened his violet eyes and found himself facing Sweetie Drops' shower caddy.
"Oh, Tartarus no..."
Nothing else could possibly fit in there. The poor thing was packed with all sorts of stuff: puffy-looking sponges, a dried up loofah, pumice stones, hoof scrubbers, medicated face wash, stallion's trimming cream (something Pharynx would keep stored in his brain for future reference), feminine razors, unscented body wash, shampoo for normal-to-oily coats, shampoo for manes, conditioners, shampoo and conditioner mixed in one bottle, shampoo and conditioner she stole from some hotel she stayed...
Just how much stuff could one mare possibly need at one time in the shower? Are stallions like this as well?
Pharynx realised he would never understand the logic ponies put behind such decisions. After making use of the unscented body wash, he focused his attention back on the plethora of bath products on the caddy.
He'd be lying if he told himself he wasn't the least bit curious to use something... maybe just one item that he'd rinse immediately thereafter, like shampoo perhaps? But changelings don't have fur coats or manes, so there's no point. It's unheard of for changelings to use shampoo, let alone what happens after one uses it. Oh well, you'll never know until you try. Pharynx reached for the least feminine-looking bottle of shampoo of the bunch. It was plain white with the product name written along the side in big, black letters. Perfect.
Still, he had to make sure it wasn't floral or anything too strong and girly. He uncapped it and took a whiff.
There was nothing that could have prepared Pharynx for what one waft of the shampoo did to him. When he inhaled deeply, his olfactory system immediately registered the scent as similar to coconut, but his mind continued working.
It's familiar. Very familiar. It's got to be; didn't 'they' say that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory?
So this was what Pharynx often caught whiffs of when Sweetie Drops would briskly trot passed him, in its most potent form.
Memories triggered.
Memories of him, as Minuette, kissing a drunk purple Earth pony by the name of Berry Punch... No, wait, wrong memory. Damn the smell of alcohol, but that explains the accidental marefriend though.
Different memories triggered.
Memories of that pink and blue maned mare. An agent assigned as a hospital attendee who'd helped him when he, for the first time in his life, couldn't help himself...
"Good morning, Sunshine." She'd lean in precariously close and he would be stirred from his daze in an instant at the sweet smell evaporating off her delicate neck. "Here, let me fluff those pillows. Your neck must be killing you."
A very reliable nurse whose presence and relieved smile made dealing with pain a small price to pay...
Sweetie Drops held Pharynx's upped body against hers in order to inspect his injuries. With his nose buried into her coat and mane for those brief moments, she was bombarded with a multitude of scents; dirt, blood, sweat, and the most potent... fruit. It was strangely relaxing like a sedative "Oh... Thank Celestia," she breathed out, "If you were any creature but a changeling, the poison would have been lethal. I'm going to use a poison extractor. You're going to be all right, Pharynx."
A feisty young mare who kept him grounded and in check, despite her constant nagging...
So caught up in his thoughts and the dull ache in his muscles allover, he failed to notice he'd stopped abruptly in the very centre of the corridor; he failed to care, too, until somepony that smelled syrupy and felt soft bumped into him from behind. "Hello, Hallway Hog! Mind moving out of the way?"
A... friend... who'd tried everything to make him come out of his shell (not literally), and was there to pull him back when he went too far out...
Sweetie Drops looped Pharynx's foreleg around her shoulders and coaxed him into heading towards the door with little resistance. He muttered incoherently into her ear... something about how she smelled nice. "Oh, I don't think I smell nice, unless you're into the beer fragrance," the mare laughed, "But I do think a certain someling's had a bit too much to drink."
Pharynx shook his head. He was sure the alcohol hadn't completely left his body if shampoo, of all things, made him think of Sweetie Drops in a wistful manner.
He shrugged and poured a generous amount of the product into his hoof and worked the lather all over himself. When he was rinsing the last bit of the shampoo off, somepony pounded his or her weight against the bathroom door, startling him.
It was Sweetie Drops. She was home.
Pharynx's heart raced. He almost lost his footing within the shower and would have if he didn't place a hoof against the slick wall to balance himself. "What?" he called out.
"How long are you planning on staying in there, Grumpy? Some of us have to take showers too, you know!"
He blinked and looked at his red wings and tail flopped like the wings of a dragonfly that have just emerged from the shell of its nymph stage. How long was he in there?
After he rinsed himself off one last time, Pharynx quickly dried up with the largest towel on the rack. Sweetie Drops was still waiting outside of the bathroom door when he opened it. She looked none-too-happy at the veil of steam permeating out into the hallway.
"What, did you think you were in a sauna instead of an actual shower?" She huffed.
Pharynx said nothing to the agent directly, knowing his silence was a far more useful weapon against her instead of senseless banter that resulted in headaches for him. Besides, when Sweetie Drops was frustrated, her eyebrows furrowed slightly. Worth it or not, there was something strangely endearing about the way she looked when he pushed the right buttons.
“You probably used up all the hot water already!” She added.
“I doubt it, but if I did, you might want to talk with your apartment manager and ask him or her to get that boiler of his or hers looked at.” Pharynx said with a sigh.
The frown melted away from her face as she stared him down before it came back in full swing, flaring nostrils and all. “What do you know, anyway? You live in, like, a mountain with an ever changing maze inside. You changelings don’t even have showers, you all bathe in one designated pool! You don’t have to pay for utilities or rent!”
“It’s called a hive and it's a hot spring, not a pool.” Pharynx corrected her.
“Whatever! The fact remains!”
It was amusing, really, how the second-in-command of the Changeling Kingdom could stand before her, damp with his guard down completely, and she’d think nothing of it.
His mind started to wonder what his life would be like if he hadn’t met her. His sly mood gone, he uttered, “Whatever,” and turned to walk away before things could go further.
But he was not more than six feet away when Sweetie Drops’ voice halted him. “Wait a minute,” she commanded, softly.
When he turned around, he pretended to be annoyed, hoping she’d take it as a challenge and would argue with him once more instead of chipping away at his emotional walls of defence. Pharynx wasn’t sure how to react if the latter continued on. He didn’t want to think of it happening.
“What do you want, pony?”
“Pharynx…” Sweetie Drops didn’t sound like she wanted to argue with him. In fact, she stepped closer to him, which made his body freeze with apprehension.
Still, the changeling was determined to keep up his image of self-control and apathy. He even leaned away from her as she approached. “What is it?”
“You filly, did you use my shampoo?”
Pharynx’s violet eyes widened briefly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If it weren’t for Pharynx’s honed skills as a gentleling, he was sure he would have begun some sort of changeling mating call with the buzzing of his wings when the mare suddenly came upon him, cheek brushing against his as she leaned in to confirm his questionable scent.
“Mm. Yep. I knew it.” She mused.
Pharynx blinked, dumbfounded. That was it? He could have sworn she was going to… He blinked himself out of his thoughts, again, and looked down his nose at her.
She was smirking a mischievous little smirk.
He hated that smirk because of what it meant and what it did. She was plotting something that would most likely bring mild embarrassment and headaches to him; even so, he was willing to suffer through it because it stirred something within his chest and had almost prompted his lips to twitch upwards at the corners, his hoof moved to reach for her and—
"—wait until Lyra hears about this." Her voice interrupted his wandering mind. With that, she calmly stepped away from him and into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Pharynx stared at the beige finish of the bathroom door, dumbly.
Did she just get the upper hand without a contest from him?
He sneered knowing she'd hear him. "I wouldn't speak of that if I were you, agent,"
"Oh?" She called out, challenging him. "And why is that, little filly?"
"Because you use trimming cream intended for stallions."
END
