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Anon snorted. “More like foreigners in a strange land, but I guess that works too.” He grunted as he leaned forward. “So, you were saying?”
She could feel his breath tickle the back of her neck. “R-Right.” She cleared her throat. “While I feel that way all the time, there’s also this other thing. I feel like ponies treat me differently than everyone else. Twilight’s friends are welcomed with open hooves, but me? I think everypony else treats me like I’m a walking bomb that’s waiting to go off at any moment.”
“Can you blame them, Fizzy? You did almost try to—”
“I know, I know.” Fizzlepop interrupted, stopping that whole tirade before it happened. “But it’s been awhile since then! Wouldn’t they, I don’t know, stop glaring at me?”
“Maybe they want you to make the move?”
Her muzzle scrunched up like an accordion. “What move do I have to make?”
Anon tapped his chin with a finger. “Hmm… What moves have you made?”
“I tried talking to a few of them. I also sometimes say hi in passing, and I even try to be nice and open a door for a pony once in a while.”
“And what do they do?”
She licked her lips before frowning. “They usually just avoid me. Or they ignore me. And the one time I opened the door, the pony waited. They waited, Anon.”
“Yikes,” he said, making her roll her eyes. “Seriously, though. Looks like you just need someone who is cool enough to call them out on it.”
She twiddled with her forehooves. “Well, the only ponies who see me for who I am are Twilight, her friends, and… you, although, you’re not a pony.”
“State the obvious, why don’t you?”
She giggled. “Hey, it’s true! Unless you want to be a pony.”
“Thought about it for a couple seconds. Then I remembered that I’m me, and there could be no one else like me. Since addition makes the most sense here, I didn’t have to think much else.”
“So, no pony transformations in your future?”
“Nope,” Anon replied bluntly. “I know somepony has a spell for it and everything, but I’d hate to lose who I am simply because I’m different from everyone else.”
She blinked. “Lose yourself because you're different?”
“Yeah, I’m Anon the human. Not Anon the stallion.”
“Good, because you being a stallion would be extremely strange,” Fizzlepop replied. She turned to take a good look at him. She smiled. “And I like you just the way you are.”
His eyes widened. “You like me?”
Her brain caught up to what she said, and she almost fell backwards, but she caught herself, if by catching herself she had to lean forward to do so, her forelegs wrapping around Anon while her chest fluff smothered his face. 
She yelped, this time giving Anon enough room to breathe. “S-Sorry. You caught me off-guard there!”
Anon spat out what hair had gotten in his mouth. “You’re good, you’re good. Just… don’t try to do that again. Not a fan of getting a hairball after being confessed to.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t mean….”
“Didn’t mean what? The hairball or…?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of suffocating you with my fur.”
Anon  chuckled behind his hand. “Totally understandable. Neither was I. But, I wasn’t finished there.”
“Oh, what do you mean?” Fizzlepop asked, tilting her head. “There was something else?”
The human took a deep breath and closed his eyes. What did she do to get him to look away from her? 
He sighed and opened his eyes. “Sorry, I had to make sure I wasn’t going to completely blunder this.”
“Blunder? What do you—”
“Don’t worry, I was just about to get to that.” He adjusted his shirt, tugging it toward his neck. “See, you said something that caught my attention, those three words. You know what I’m talking about?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she muttered, her turn to search for something on the ground that was more interesting than her beating heart, which was racing at this point. “I… I know what you’re talking about.”
Was she supposed to say this? ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say it so outright?’ There’s steps to these things, Fizzlepop! And now she just skipped twenty pages of a prominent romance novel that Twilight loaned her last week! How did she manage that? Was it her absent-mindedness that still plagued her since the Sugarcube Corner?
She frowned. Wait, how did she just realize that now? Was her mind out for lunch?
Shaking her head, she focused on the task at hoof. Anon thought she meant romance, and well, she was definitely not thinking at all when she said it, but now that she looked at him…
She took a good hard glance at him, if by glance she meant a quick up and down, a quick foray into human biology. Not that she was a reader of that sort of thing—the biology, not the human part—but she was an avid reader of attraction, at least as of late. And he was someone that definitely made her feel a certain way. That mane that looked like a mess? While it was definitely a mess, it was a mess she liked. 
Those eyes? Undefined, but they were so… alluring. She could stare at them if she wanted to. Just like the stars.
His neck. Yeah, there was no question she wanted to nuzzle into it.
And his body, his voice, his everything—yeah, there was no doubt he was her type.
She blinked. So, maybe her words had merit. She liked him just the way he was. What else was there to say? 
She looked into his eyes. He looked into hers…
“So… what do you think?”
Fizzlepop cleared her throat of whatever fuzzy feelings she had bubbling inside it. “I’m a little bit conflicted.”
“Conflicted?” Anon asked, raising a brow. “Did you mean—”
“Yes, I did. I like you just the way you are, Anon. You are…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to cherry pick her words (what did the main character say here—oh!), before she licked her lips. “You mean a lot to me. A lot more than I realized.”
“More than you realized?”
“Yeah…” She twiddled with her forehooves. “I wasn’t lying when I said you caught me off-guard. You caught me off-guard in more ways than one.”
“I see…” Anon muttered.