Hearts Beat

by mushroompone

Rain

It had been scheduled, of course. But my mind had been elsewhere lately, and I guess I had forgotten to check the schedule.

You could tell it was a rookie's first day out when the pressure changed quick enough to make you woozy. Some trigger-happy, not-as-strong-as-they-thought-they-were pegasus was leading the pressure system for the first time, and realizing that maybe weather ponies were jacked for a reason.

A rumble of thunder rolled in from the distance, and a flash of lightning illuminated my foyer for an instant. One, two… and another extraordinary clap of thunder shot up my spine.

The rain fell in a sheet, every first drop hitting the ground at once. It shouldn’t have even been raining, I thought-- they typically didn’t allow rain until after winter wrap-up.

I smiled to myself. Rainbow had complained many times about the inexperienced pegasi doing foolish things. Most wouldn't notice these things, but I thought about Rainbow's storm critiques every time it rained. I didn’t pretend to know all there was to know about weather, of course.

Enough clouds to make the sky grey and gloomy, just as a warning to those who didn't check the schedule. Five minutes more, and drop the pressure slowly. Joints would creak. Old bone fractures would ache. Ten minutes of this, and the rain would start, first a drizzle or a mist, building to something more steady and true. Only after twenty minutes of good, drenching rain was it considered safe to vent built-up static electricity via lightning.

Rainbow didn't say it like that, of course. Her complaints were more swear-laden and screechy.

I placed a hoof on my door.

Wait…

Where could I even go to find Vinyl?

She was staying with friends, but I couldn't remember who they were and certainly wouldn't know where they lived.

My hoof slid off the door and onto the floor.

Shoot.

As I stood there, pondering my next move, I heard a noise through the door. There was something sort of… musical about it. Like somepony singing a nonsense song to themselves. The voice had a deep, but mellow, cadence; an alto, I guess you could say.

Now that I really listened, it wasn’t nonsense at all. It was steady. Melodic.

I put my hoof back on the door and pushed. The wind pulled the door away from me in an instant.

Vinyl was on my porch.

"Vinyl?!" I called to her, only a few feet away, over the howling wind.

She was squinting into the rain. "Hey! Everything okay?"

"What are you doing out here?" I asked. "It's dangerous!"

"It's only been dangerous for about a minute, Twi!"

Another clap of thunder rang through town.

I closed my eyes, concentrated hard, and managed to conjure a half-baked magical shield which hung in the air over the both of us.

Vinyl was absolutely soaked. Her mane hung down straight, as if it were made of fine strands of lead. Raindrops fell from her stomach and pooled on the porch.

I laughed lightly. "You waited for me?"

"Why wouldn't I wait for you?"

I laughed a little more, kind of disbelieving. "Nopony's ever waited for me in the rain before."

"Well, like I said, it was only about a--"

"Oh, hush," I commanded.

Vinyl smiled. "Okay."

We stood there a minute, looking at each other. I took a step closer to Vinyl, tucking my chin down to look at her. Vinyl blushed, but took a step closer to me, tilting her head up to see me better.

We both sort of giggled.

“Alright, I may have lied a little,” Vinyl said. “I didn’t exactly wait for you.”

I arched one eyebrow. “Oh?”

Her eyes sort of sparkled. I don’t know how else to explain it… it was like a little bit of light danced through them, otherwise unseen. She smiled, almost disbelieving.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she said. “I’m sorry, Princess Twilight Sparkle.”

I giggled, and a little snort snuck out.

This only served to widen Vinyl’s grin. “Would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a date?”

I put a hoof over my mouth to disguise my further giggling.

Vinyl sort of looked from side to side. “Actually-- y’know, no matter what, you’ll have to come with me. I may have assumed you’d say yes and just gone ahead and I had to pay in advance… just come with me, will ya?” She shook her head, as if embarrassed by her babbling.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” She repeated, beaming up at me.

I nodded.

“Alright!” Vinyl pumped her hoof in the air. She then reached over and hooked her foreleg around mine. “Come on!”

We took off running across the muddy roads. Well, Vinyl running, me cantering. The shield I’d been holding flickered and faded, and the rain soaked me in moments. But I didn’t care; it felt as refreshing as a summer storm, despite the chill in the air. It should have been icy, should have shot deep into my joints and made me feel ready to crumple into a pile of flesh and bones.

But it was exciting. Electric.

We were both laughing. Laughing in that teenager way, where you don’t know what you’re laughing at, but you can’t stop.

Vinyl looked back at me, then made a sudden turn to the right. I skidded to a near-stop, following her agile turn with one considerably less so, splashing mud in a great arc. The brown splatters nearly reached my knees, but I didn’t care.

“Here!” Vinyl shouted. Her sprint had slowed to a trot.

I followed her lead, coming to a stop in front of a small diner.

Vinyl shook herself dry like a dog, though it had very little effect in the still-driving rain. She looked at me sheepishly, wondering what to do.

I came to her side and, using all of my concentration, was able to magically disperse all of the mud and most of the rainwater.

We scuttled into the diner quickly, trying not to accumulate much more rainwater in our manes and fur.

The diner had one of those little vestibules in the front, the kind with one leather booth and two gumball machines. We stopped here for a breather.

“Damn, you’re a good pony to have around,” Vinyl commented, nudging me in the ribs.

I smiled. I didn’t even know what to say, I was just smiling and blushing and happy.

We wiped our hooves in the well-worn rug and opened the door into the real diner.

It was mostly empty. There was one other group of ponies off to the left, clearly finished with their meals and waiting patiently for the rain to stop.

On the right, however…

“Ta-da!” Vinyl made a grand, sweeping gesture in the direction of a table already filled with breakfast delicacies, yet surrounded by empty booths.

It was strangely quiet in the diner, despite the constant droning of the rain on the roof and the awning. The ponies on the other side of the room were doing nothing more than sipping coffee and speaking in hushed voices, staring out the window at weather-torn Ponyville. The usually aggressive sounds of the kitchen were quieted, too.

My smile broke open into something wide and toothy. I couldn’t help myself from laughing a little. “Vinyl, what--”

“I was gonna make you breakfast this morning, but I got… interrupted,” she explained. “So here’s the breakfast I would’ve made you. If I had time. And could cook.”

I stepped forward, looking over the feast before me. The food was split amongst many different plates, each individual offering on its own small platter.

“Also, I don’t really know what you like to have for breakfast,” Vinyl said, coming to my side. “So I ordered some of everything. Can’t believe they cooked it so fast.”

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath through my nose. My stomach growled in response.

“Vinyl, you didn’t have to do this,” I said.

She scoffed. “Of course I didn’t have to. But… I wanted to.”

“To make me feel like a princess?” I asked.

Vinyl shook her head. “To make you feel normal, Twilight. This is what… y’know couples and stuff do. Buy each other food.”

“Couples?” I repeated.

“And stuff,” Vinyl corrected. “You’re forgetting ‘and stuff’. Couples and stuff.”

I smirked at her.

“Do you like it?” Vinyl asked softly.

“I love it!” I said, hooking my foreleg around her shoulders and planting a kiss on her temple.

Vinyl tucked her ears down and blushed fiercely. “Yeah, well...” She couldn’t finish her thought, but she was smiling.

I could hardly keep myself from smiling back. It felt stupid to smile so much; especially with the knot at the pit of my stomach, and the little voice in the back of my head reciting ‘what if’ questions like a tape recorder. But, if I was honest, seeing the way Vinyl looked at me was unraveling the knot, and her voice made the one in my head seem shrill and demanding by comparison.

“Thank you,” I said. “But we need to talk.”

Vinyl’s smile melted. “Talk? Like… talk talk?”

I sighed. “Vinyl… I’ve been stressed and fretting for weeks, now, about all of this.”

“You have?”

“It’s all I can think about.” I glanced over at the food on the table before us. “You know, there’s no reason we can’t talk over food.”

Vinyl looked at me, then back at the food. Her stomach, too, seemed to have a mind of its own, and growled loudly. She looked back up at me with a sheepish grin.

We slid into opposite sides of the booth.

“So…” Vinyl tapped her hooves on the table. “When you say you’ve been stressed about this… what exactly do you mean by that?”

“Well, you have to admit this hasn’t been a… traditional courtship,” I said carefully. Vinyl wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve just spent so much time being confused, mostly. And I hate being confused.”

“Confused about what?” Vinyl asked.

“About everything,” I said. “About you, about me, about all the stuff we did together… what do you see me as, Vinyl?”

Vinyl bit down on her lip. “Well, what do you see me as?”

I giggled. “I asked you first.”

She flashed a little smile which quickly faded. “I… I don’t really know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry if that’s a bad answer.”

I laughed lightly, incredulously. “How can you not know?”

Vinyl shrugged. “I just… I know I wanna be close to you. You’re one of the best ponies I’ve ever met, Twilight. You’re so smart, and I could listen to you talk for hours, and-- well. You’re pretty.”

I fought a smile.

“I haven’t really thought about, like, labels or anything. I just know I want you in my life,” Vinyl said. “Is that… I dunno. Is that okay?”

I looked down at my hooves. “Vinyl…”

Vinyl braced herself, as if for a slap.

“Look,” I said. I leaned forward a bit. “I have to be honest. I watched all that stuff go down between you and Octavia, and I just have to wonder… is the same thing going to happen with you and me?”

Vinyl blinked. “I don’t know.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Oh.”

“I mean, I didn’t know it was gonna happen with Octavia,” she said. “I don’t think it’s something you can know. You either grow together or you grow apart, right?”

“That’s… not really what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?” Vinyl asked.

“I meant..” I wiggled in my seat a little. The vinyl booth was sticking to my damp flanks. “Well, to be frank, you were… you were doing things with me before you’d broken up with Octavia. How do I know that won’t happen again?”

Vinyl kind of froze.

The silence between us yawned open like a giant void. The unspoken thing. That, for a brief time, I had been ‘the other mare’.

Vinyl swallowed hard, then looked up at me. “It won’t.”

“But how do I--”

“Because this is different,” Vinyl said. She grit her teeth. “I… I can’t really explain it. I just know that it won’t be like that. It can’t be like that.”

We were quiet again. The clatter of dishes being picked up rang through the diner. The rain continued to rattle the roof, like the driving backbeat to the melodious tones of the dishes.

“I just don’t know if I can do this unless I’m sure,” I said.

“Who’s ever sure?” Vinyl asked.

I cocked my head. “Huh?”

“Who’s ever sure, Twilight?” she repeated. “Really. Ponies don’t do this stuff ‘cause they’re sure. They do it because-- well, I dunno why they do it, honestly.”

“Why do you want to do it?” I asked.

Vinyl looked at me for a long time, her eyes desperately searching for an anchor on my face, yet seeming to endlessly wander over it. She looked down at her lap quite suddenly, examining her hooves in great detail. Her ears seemed alert, high and swiveling slightly.

She cleared her throat. “Because, when I look at you, the music sounds clearer.”

My heart skipped a beat.

She looked up at me. “You know. Like I told you.”

“I know,” I said breathlessly.

“And… Octavia may have liked music, but it was never like that with her,” she continued. “She never made it sound like it does when I’m with you. And she definitely never wrote me a song.” She smiled a little. “I mean, if friendship is magic… isn’t love magic, too?”

I smiled back at her. “It’s not a bad thesis. I wouldn’t mind testing it out.”

Comments

[mushroompone]

10203893
Dang, you got some spider senses!! New chapter just got uploaded

[Venerable Ro]

Oh, poor Twilight. She's a verra confused little pony, she needs assurances. More smooching!

[Eris Dis Harmonia]

I am loving this story! Oh, tomorrow cannot come soon enough!

[Lore Horse]

She cleared her throat. “Because, when I look at you, the music sounds clearer.”

Aaaah! My heart!

[Knight N Gale]

10203902
No chapter today?

[Natedogg2006]

This was the idea that spawned this whole story, wasn't it? That line right at the end, I could see writing a whole story around it. So good.