Silent Love - Part One

by Sagami


At the arcade

Raaaah, screw this!”Vinyl thought, wandering around the large hallways“Can’t we just have one class where I can chill without getting harassed by a weird teacher? The only one who doesn’t care is the music class guy, but it’s the only class I actually care about! Karma’s a bitch, I guess…

The afternoon was ending, and Vinyl was waiting for Bon-Bon. Her and Lyra had asked the DJ if she wanted to hang out at the bowling alley. The prospect of getting her ass handed by Lyra at bowling wasn’t pleasing, but spending time with Bon-Bon was cool. Shame she wasn’t in their class, but she apparently had made good friends amongst the other class’s students. There was that hot rainbow-haired girl, fittingly named Rainbow Dash, and a small shy girl, Fluttershy, that spoke so little that people thought Vinyl was only the second mute in town.

Lyra exited the bathroom by kicking the door, her hands still soaked with water.

“Dude, the hand dryer’s broken again!”

She smirked at Vinyl, and before the DJ could try anything, she shook both her hands, sending every water drop she could on her friend’s face.

Lyra laughed at her incredibly developed prank, not paying attention to Vinyl taking her bag off her back. Next thing she knew ; 11 pounds of books, pens and energy drinks sent their entire momentum in her left hip. The impact made her stagger, as Vinyl looked at her with flaming eyes.

“Haha… Ouch man, that kinda hurts but,... You were so surprised.”

“...”

“I’m sixteen, thanks for asking, but nothing wrong with a little childish humor! I’m sure Bon-Bon would agree!”

“What would I agree with?”

The two girls turned around, now facing their friend. She was wearing light blue jeans and a yellow shirt, covered by a darker blue fluffy coat, and a white scarf. The stick of a lollipop was stuck between her lips. A true allegory of cuteness, especially giving the “squee” Lyra was making.

“Vinyl, how come you only wear a tank top and a jacket? It’s fifty-three degrees!”

Vinyl smiled at the girl’s confusion, and wrote a small note on a crumpled paper she had found in her pocket:

I don’t really get cold. Dunno why, always has been a mystery to my family.

“Oh well, fair enough.” She smiled “Is Octavia not coming?”

“Nah.” Lyra replied “You know her, she had to get back to her place.”

“Too bad… I wish I had more time to talk to her. She doesn’t reply to texts very often.”

“Well, her phone is not something she can have around in her house.”

“You’re right. But I’m happy to spend some time with you two! How’s your English teacher?”

“She’s… pretty normal I guess, considering all the specimen’s we’ve had so far. Constant angry face, formally dressed, here to put bad grades and take names. You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh I sure do, we have a similar one in our class. Well, shall we be going? I have to say I’m pretty excited, I’ve never been to an arcade before. Do you think there’ll be something to eat? I’m truly starving.”

“Don’t worry, after I kick your ass at “Return of Maniac”, you’ll feast on your own tears.”

“I’d love to see you try Lyra.”

}--oO0Oo--{

“You owe me five dollars Lyra.”

“Wha… wait, wha? Wh...What?”

Damn. Vinyl hasn’t expecting that. Bon-Bon just annihilated Lyra at that game. After Lyra had beaten her, just as planned, a few minutes ago, she had chosen a table and thrown her bag on the bench seat, crossing her legs on the table. She was now laughing from afar at her friend’s confusion. Nobody had ever beaten Lyra at that game, and neither her or Vinyl thought that Bon-Bon was going to be the chosen one. But the gods had spoken, and both girls were now walking towards the table, one smiling at her victory, and the other other contemplating changing her identity to prevent anyone from learning about this moment of her life.

“Vinyl, you should’ve seen that: everything that could've gone wrong went wrong…”

Oh I saw that Lyra. You got your ass kicked.

“Heads up Lyra!” Bon-Bon said, a warm smile on her face “I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Really? Thanks dude!”

“Don’t thank me, you paid for it.”

“Oh that’s right. Fuck you then.”

The pianist laughed at her friend’s insult, raising her hand to get a waiter’s attention.

“I’ll have a cranberry juice.”

“Make that two.”

“Mint syrup” a paper read, met with a confused eye from the young man.

“Vinyl, I was wondering, why don’t you have any kind of badge that warn people about your condition or something? I feel like it’d come in handy with a lot of situations.”

“Oh that’s easy!” Said Lyra before Vinyl could ever take out her pen “First, a badge looks dumb as fuck. Then, it’s kinda funny to observe people’s expressions when they don’t realize that you’re mute. Even funnier when they finally do.”

“That is… a fair point I guess. Anyway, you still haven’t told me about the end of today’s operation on Octavia’s driver! What did you do? Where did you put the car? Did he notice?”

“Oh boy, that’s right, you weren’t there! Well, promise you won’t freak out, okay?”

“Yeah, of course!” She said, eyes shining with anticipation like a child under the Christmas tree.

“Okay then. Vinyl, care to do the honors?”

Vinyl smiled, took out her phone and wrote a few lines. When Bon-Bon’s phone rang, she immediately unlocked it and went to read the text:

We kinda stole the car, then crashed it in a junkyard w/ me inside (im alright btw). Also the guy didn’t notice anything until he left, and Volume didn’t give him any way of contacting him. So there’s that. Pls dont freak out. xoxo

“WAIT, WHAT?!”

Aw shit.

Bon-Bon couldn’t believe her eyes. What exactly did she just read on her phone’s screen? Vinyl and Lyra crashed a 72” limo in a junkyard, and with Vinyl driving the said vehicle until its final moments?!

Her eyes suddenly became ablaze with flames as she turned towards the girl sitting next to her:

“Lyra…”

“Hey hey hey, hold on! Don’t look at me like that! It was one hundred percent Vinyl’s idea! I wanted to put a brick on the pedal or something, but she insisted on driving herself!”

Bon-Bon’s eyes quickly went from anger to true worry:

“Vinyl, is this true?”

Vinyl looked at her friend with guilty eyes, her usual smirk having disappeared at the pianist’s words. She closed her fist and shook it vertically, confirming her friend’s suspicions.

Suddenly, Bon-Bon’s eyes started watering, and her hands shaking. She stood up, went to Vinyl’s seat, and without a warning, took the DJ in her arms, holding her tight as she herself was trembling.

“Don’t you ever, ever do this again without me or Octavia…”

Vinyl’s first surprise by her friend’s hug quickly wore off to let her realize what was going on in the girl’s head right now. She and Lyra had taken monumental risks without even telling her, and thinking that she would simply accept the facts was a fucking dumb idea. She squeezed back, returning the hug, as a tear rolled down her left cheek.

Vinyl didn’t cry easily, but there was one thing she couldn’t handle: to watch as the ones closest to her were in pain.

As she was hugging Bon-Bon, the scar on her neck started to feel strange, itching and burning like it was trying to remind her of why she cared about her friends even more than about herself.

No. Never again…

}--oO0Oo--{

Bon-Bon and Lyra were now sitting next to each others again, sipping their cranberry juices, while Vinyl was adding three extra cubes of ice in her mint syrup. They had now been talking for thirty minutes about this morning’s events. After her initial shock over Vinyl’s stunt, she had delighted in the details of Volume Bass and Lyra police impressions, as well as Vinyl’s unexpected skills at driving a limo.

“Hey by the way Bon-Bon!” Lyra exclaimed, swallowing the little sugar cube placed next to her drink, “Vinyl and I are together.”

This made Vinyl spill her entire drink on the table, in the most fantastic derp face since that girl they saw in the lunchroom. She wasn’t expecting this at all. She wasn’t angry, sure, Lyra had already told her that she was planning on telling Bon-Bon, but the final reveal was a bit more… brutal than anticipated.

“Together, as in a couple you mean?” asked the girl with an amused grin.

“Well, yeah… I mean, we’ve been like this for a while now, but we just wanted to tell you. You know, so it doesn’t get awkward or anything…”

Bon-Bon chuckled in an almost inaudible laugh:

“Oh Lyra, I’ve known since the first day, you know. You two already act like an old couple, always arguing on the smallest things, but at the same time giving the other one loving looks.”

“Shit, is it that obvious?”

“Well, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard anyone in CHS even remotely evocate you as a couple. I guess for me, it’s more of my mother’s sociology degree kicking in. I’m quite good at figuring out these sort of things.”

“So, you’re okay with that or whatever?”

The girl took several napkins to help Vinyl clean the green liquid off the table, and gave Lyra a warm smile:

“Why wouldn’t I be? If you two are happy, then I am too!”

Vinyl looked at her friend in the eyes, and noticed a small twitch on her face as she was pronouncing those words. For a few seconds, she felt intrigued, before smiling at what she had just discovered.

“Although I can’t say I’ve had a gay couple of friends before… Is it okay for me to say this? Or do you think it’s offensive?” she blushed.

Lyra and Vinyl both laughed at their friend’s confusion, the latter scaring every other client in the room with her gasps for air.

“Yeah dude!” Lyra laughed, wiping a tear from her eye, “What else do you want to say? We don’t get offended that easily here.”

As Bon-Bon was finishing cleaning the spilled drink off the table, Vinyl tapped her partner’s elbow, showing her a text she had just wrote:

“She said she’s ok, but she’s jealous af girl. Saw it in her eyes. I think she likes u.”

Vinyl then took a few seconds to refrain from screaming after having her foot crushed by Lyra’s heel. She found it cute, really. And she never had any problems with Lyra liking other girls. If they couldn’t do what the fuck they wanted at their age, when else would they do it? She had been told multiple times that it was “weird of her” to be totally okay with that, but hell, Lyra was her friends before anything else.

“May I ask” Bon-Bon resumed “How did you get from friends to lovers?”

Lyra was about to answer when she got touched on the shoulder by Vinyl, who gave her a calm smile and a few hand signs.

“Okay dude, I’ll let you do the talking. Pun intended.”

The DJ shook her head in a desperate attempt to get that joke out of her brain, grabbed her phone in one hand and what was left of her drink in the other, and with a surprising agility and speed, she started typing on her screen, going way faster than somebody using his two hands.

After looking at her friend for a few minutes in admiration, Bon-Bon heard a small beep from the phone laying next to her arm:

We dont really know, but we’re not exactly lovers, i guess. Its kinda more like, experiencing. We’ve been friends for over 6 years, and felt like it could be a bit more… spicy. ^^ Long story short, i’ve been w/ girls before, Lyra hasn’t, she wanted to try, and since we were both moving in a new city and leaving everyone else behind, she went for me (i know she’s weird, dont ask). I wouldn’t say we’re in love, neither would she, it’s more of a friendship thing brought to the next level. Sounds dumb and complicated when i write it like this, but i swear to you its as simple as that xD

Vinyl took the opportunity to text Lyra a few words:

Bet she’s glad to learn that.

The text was met with crimson cheeks from Lyra. Bon-Bon, on the other side of the table, had just finished reading, and an expression of pure calm and joy was written on her face.

“I’m so happy for you girls! You both are so cute together! I’ve had some… unsuccessful experiences with boys before, makes me want to tr…”

She stopped instantly mid-sentence, blushing and drinking her fruit juice to avoid the subject. The two other girls exchanged a knowing glance.

“Well if you eveeeeeer want to know what it’s like, I… We would gladly tell you. So far, fun. Better than my past boyfriends. Also sex is better.”

“Oh!” Bon-Bon said in an awkward laugh “I’m sure it is! I’m also glad Octavia isn’t here, she most likely would have called a cab to get as far from here as possible right now!”

Lyra, maybe there’s a thin line between announcing that we’re together and talking about fucking each other.

“Talking about Octavia, what are we going to do concerning Pinkie Pie’s party on Saturday?” Bon-Bon asked, probably willing to change the subject before saying something she could regret.

“Well, she doesn’t want to come, right? We shouldn’t force her.”

“But maybe we should! It’s the first party of the year! The first time all the students come to meet each others and have fun! Plus, I’ve been told Pinkie Pie has some serious skills when it comes to planning stuff like this. She already asked me to make candies, I don’t know how she knew I made some, but she did. I’m sure she’s asked Vinyl to use her skills as a DJ, and I’m also sure you and Octavia could bring your instruments for the ones wanting to listen to you!”

“Sure, but-”

“And you know she wants to come, it’s her parents who keep her away from socializing! They even went as far as forbidding her to talk to us again! How do you want her to be happy if she’s alone like this?!”

Vinyl felt tears coming up. Not that she had learned or realized anything about Octavia’s life, but because sometimes, rarely but sometimes, she was sick of being mute. Of not being able to show how much she cared about her friends, like Bon-Bon was doing at the moment. She wanted to stand up, put her hands on the table, and say “Ok, here’s the plan”. But she was stuck in listening to others. Sure, she had her paper and her phone, but how could she ever express what she felt through a page or a screen?

“We need to find something.” Bon-Bon continued as Vinyl rubbed her eyes with her napkin and Lyra was listening closely, her head wrapped in her green scarf “Either something that would convince her to come with us, or a way to have her go anyway.”

“Wow, okay” Lyra laughed “So we’re going on the kidnapping scenario? I’m cool with that.”

Vinyl smiled at her girlfriend’s joke, but deep down she felt like this had no way out. They couldn’t force Tavi into an open war with her parents, and the latter most likely had enough influence to get the three of them into some serious shit. Suddenly, her pupil widened, as she possibly found the perfect idea to get her friend to come and, for the first time, take a look at what a true life was.