In a Cello Mood

Dear Diary,

Exam exam exam! We’re having an exam today! Sure, I didn’t get any sleep, but then again, I hear that it is optional to sleep before an exam. I hope it won’t affect my grade! Oh, what if it affects my grade?! I know it’s just five a.m., but I think it’s time to wake Vinyl…

Oh, what if I fail? What if I get a B? Mom will disown me, and Jeffrey won’t talk to me, and Vinyl will dump me for somepony smart! Celestia, I’m on the verge of crying… No, I have to pass this exam, and I need to do so with distinction. I really hope it’s not one of those check-on-the-spot exams…

***

“It’s a check-on-the-spot exam, so our results will be announced today,” Lyra explained, her hoof wrapped around a very trembling and nervous Bon-Bon.

“Whaaaaa-”

Before Octavia could yell and get them kicked out before the exam even started, Vinyl quickly pressed her hoof against the cellist’s mouth. Then, remembering how Octavia had woken her up with a kiss this morning, opted for pressing her lips against Octavia’s instead. It wasn’t exactly a kiss, but it did pacify Octavia enough for her to stop worrying.

“Eww,” Beauty gagged on thin air, marching past the four ponies into the classroom. “Plebeian ponies who can’t keep their kisses to themselves.”

“Can I murder her?” Vinyl asked, turning to Octavia with pleading eyes. “I know she’s Frederic’s marefriend now, but I really really wanna murder her. Can I, please?”

“No.” Octavia shook her head, her worries evaporating slowly. “Frederic would be really sad if that happened. But I share your sentiment.” She took a deep breath, looking at the open door. The whole group was already inside, preparing their pens and paper. “Well, at least we’ll be together.” The cellist smiled at her marefriend warmly.

“Um… Tavi?” Vinyl offered meekly, stepping aside and pointing to the adjacent classroom. “We are at different faculties, remember? We’re having different exams today.”

Octavia froze in place, the realisation slowly dawning upon her. She stepped back, then took another step, and was just about to gallop off when Lyra caught her. “Let me go!” Octavia shrieked. “I can’t do this alone!”

“Alone?” Bon-Bon said finally, a little more confident, at least compared to the cellist’s tantrum. “So Lyra and I don’t count as your friends anymore?” she said in a somewhat offended voice.

“No, what I meant is…” Octavia sighed and, to her surprise, hugged Bon-Bon tight. “You are the best friends I could ever ask for. But doing this whole thing without Vinyl…” She looked at her marefriend. “It’s so… hard.”

“Not as hard as the sex you two will be having,” Lyra comforted the grey mare just as the assistant professor entered the classroom. “Come on, let’s nail this Music Theory.” Before Octavia could say anything, Lyra pushed her into the class, winking at Vinyl. “Morituri te salutant.”

Vinyl stood there for a while, trying to collect her thoughts, then stepped into her own classroom with a deep, heavy sigh.

***

“Octavia Philarmonica,” the merciless voice of the assistant professor proclaimed. Octavia began shivering uncontrollably, but still found enough clarity in her mind to try and glance through the paper. Unfortunately, the mark wasn’t quite visible. “Ninety-five percent. An A-plus.”

Octavia just stared at the stallion for some time until the information had sunk in. “Yess!” She threw her hoof in the air, hugging Lyra tight. “That’s how we do it in the Classical Faculty!” She laughed and smiled and wanted to kiss Vinyl very much, but Vinyl just waved at her from her own group of classmates, standing next to the adjacent classroom, waiting for their AP to come out and voice their results.

And the AP didn’t make them wait. Octavia would expect him to be a wild, piercing-sporting deejay. Instead, a neat (and rather pretty) young mare left the room. “Hear ye, hear ye!” she announced loudly, showing her tongue to the Classical Faculty AP. “I’m not some old-fashioned pompous saddlewiener, so come in and see your results for yourself.”

The ‘saddlewiener’ gritted his teeth as the EDM students poured into the classroom. “Beauty Brass!” he announced, taking the next paper. “Ninety-three percent. An A.” He almost took another paper when a loud “What?!” interrupted him.

“What?!” Beauty repeating, glaring daggers at the stallion. “How come Philarmonica gets an A-plus, and I get an A?”

“The system of gradation,” the AP explained calmly, “is no secret. Ninety up to ninety-four percent is an A. Ninety-five percent and up is an A-plus.”

Beauty gritted her teeth, but, instead of saying anything, stormed off in the direction of the bathroom. “Do we run after her? I think she might be crying there,” Bon-Bon offered, but Lyra’s hoof prevented her from moving.

“Nu-uh, Bonnie.” Lyra shook her head. “We’re just, like, forty thousand words in. It would be anticlimatic if we make friends with her now.”

“Wha-” Bon-Bon began, but the AP has already announced:

“Bonnibel Bonaparte. Seventy-five. A C.”

Bon-Bon smiled. “Well, that went better than expected.” She blew a kiss to her marefriend, who just smiled knowingly.

Octavia blinked. “Your full name is-”

But, before she could continue, she was swept off her hooves by a white-and-blue blur of a pony that threw itself at her and pinned her to the floor. “I got a B! I got a B! I got a B!” she chanted, showering Octavia with little pecks all over the face.

“Kissing is prohibited on university premises,” the Classical Faculty AP (whom Octavia had begun to call ‘saddlewiener’ in her mind) tried, but the AP mare from the EDM faculty approached him and gave him a big sloppy kiss, breaking the aforementioned rule. Whispering something in his ear, she flicked her tail against his flank and disappeared.

It took the blushing stallion a few moments to gather his composure. “Ahem. Lyra Heartstrings…” He paused, giving the mint mare a hard glare. “Do I even have to read out your result?”

“A-plus, ninety-nine percent,” Lyra said in a bored tone. “Because it is a university rule not to give anyone one hundred percent for a written work. Thanks.” She shrugged, rubbing her cheek against Bon-Bon’s. Then she took a piece of paper and wrote an address on it, handing it to Vinyl, who had finally gotten off Octavia. “Party at my place? Since the next exam is in two days and we can-” Suddenly, Lyra froze and glared at the AP, pointing an accusing hoof at him. “Why didn’t you think of this sooner? We would’ve had time to prepare!”

Octavia and Vinyl exchanged worried glances. Bon-Bon just sighed, clearly used to her marefriend’s magical premonitions.

The AP grunted something very similar to ‘government facility’ and ‘ship the weird unicorn’, then sighed and announced: “As Miss Heartstrings has already… sensed, the exam on Dissonance Theory for the Classical faculty students will be held tomorrow, instead of the tenth of October.”

“What?!” Bon-Bon and Octavia exclaimed in unison.

The AP mare, who had just walked out of the classroom, announced proudly: “Oh yes, and for all fellow Turntablists, your exam in Audience Interaction is tomorrow. And it’s an oral exam so go talk to some mirrors.” She winked and approached the male AP, standing just a little away from him to both keep distance and still make him uncomfortable.

“What?!” Vinyl exclaimed in turn, looking at the older mare in disbelief. “Two exams in succession? Is that even legal?”

Lyra sighed and rubbed her nose. “Guess the party will have to wait…”

***

Octavia tried, vainly, to concentrate on the books, finally giving up and placing her head in Vinyl’s lap. “I give up. Dissonance Theory is way too weird to comprehend.” Irritated, the mare slammed the book shut and rubbed her temples. "I'll never pass that exam. Who even makes the damn curriculum? Dissonance Theory in the first semester?" She glared at the book. “Really?”

Gently, the unicorn used her magic to soothe the exhausted cellist’s skin, a tiny gust of breeze waving at her like a propeller. Idly, she toyed with her marefriend’s gorgeous mane. “Let’s have a break, Tavi.” Vinyl smiled. “Go to the kitchen and ask your mom or Jeffrey for some biscuits?” Mmm. Biscuits.

Octavia sighed, forcing shapes from beneath her eyelids. “They left for groceries a couple hours ago. To another town. I don’t even know why.”

Slyly, Vinyl’s face lit up with a grin. Oh. Oooooh. “Tavi,” she said slowly, ideas commanding her mind. “Do you why they did that?”

Octavia opened her eyes with a rusty blink and yawned. “Why?” she wondered dumbly.

Vinyl lifted her hoof. “Because they both think we are not studying right now.” She lowered her hoof grandly. “They both think we are having sex,” the mare whispered in a conspirational manner. “The well-deserved, after-the-exam, before-an-exam, wild, youthful rut.”

Octavia gasped and lit up with a thick blush. “Vinyl! Mind your tongue!” Oh Celestia. Get that image out of my head! Or, rather… Ugh. “They would never think so low of me!”

“Huh?” Vinyl stopped rubbing Octavia’s scalp abruptly. “What’s wrong with having a rut with me?” she let out in a hurt tone.

Octavia opened her mouth and sat up, contemplating what to say. “Vinyl, we’re… not really… that is…” She closed her mouth and gave her brain some more time for contemplation. “Okay. You know what I’ve always thought? You can’t have sex until marriage,” she said finally. “That’s what I was taught. You find the right colt, then you date him, then you get married and kiss and then you have sex. To make a foal.” She blushed a little, having reiterated the lesson perfectly. “When you showed up at the horizon, everything changed.” When the Vinyl nation attacked, a little pony in her head continued. What.

Vinyl chuckled, shaking her head slightly. “But you are dating a mare. Not a stallion.” She lowered her eyelids sensually. “So… since sex is not about making foals or marriage…” The unicorn crawled on the bed towards the gradually reddening cellist. “Maybe your mom and Jeffrey were right, and we should just…”

Octavia’s back hit the wall as she cursed the inconvenient positioning of the bed. “Vinyl, what are you-” Vinyl. Proceed.

Vinyl leant in, breathing hotly on the cellist’s face. “Well… It’s been too long, Tavi. I think we should finally try this.” She pressed her lips against her marefriend’s, uniting them in a kiss, which lasted longer than the few previous ones they’d shared, and had much more impact on the grey mare.

“Wow.” Octavia licked her saliva-stained lips as the mares broke the kiss. “Wow. That… felt good. You used tongue in, uhm, in a special way,” she observed, blushing slightly at the thought that, previously, their kisses had been more of a formality of dating… but now…

“I did.” Vinyl crawled over Octavia’s trembling, anticipating body with a thick smile. “And I want…” The unicorn pressed her lips against Octavia’s ear, whispering, “To show you…” She abruptly slid down the grey body, which was blushing all by now, with Octavia’s mind reeling in impossible directions. Vinyl looked up from the lower part of Octavia and met her marefriend’s eyes with her sultry gaze. “Just how much I can use tongue~”

That’s it, Octavia thought. It’s happening. It’s finally happening. And not like I thought at all… How can two mares even-? Do we need a condom? What if she uses her horn instead of a, um. Will we need a horn condom?

Vinyl dug in, her head disappearing between Octavia’s legs…

“Vinyl?” Octavia blinked, shifting uneasily. “What are you doing?” Vinyl. Stahp.

“Mmfm?”

“Vinyl.” Octavia tapped Vinyl’s head, the top just above the horn. “You… You are licking my knee.” And it weirds me out.

“Um.” Vinyl lifted her head, her white face lighting up with pink. “I… Doesn’t that turn you on?” She shifted uneasily. “Doesn’t that make you, well, uh. Wet?”

Octavia tinted with embarrassment. “Vinyl! Why would I be wet?” She tried to come up with a response. “You were licking the inside of my knee. It’s… sloppy. And weird.”

Vinyl opened her mouth helplessly. “I am pretty sure you have to be, uh, wet. You know, down there.” Awkwardly, the DJ flushed. “I mean. For us to have sex.”

“Why should I-” A realisation dawned upon the young cellist. “Vinyl. You… You actually have no idea what to do, do you.”

In sheer shame, Vinyl winced and nodded quickly. “Do you?” she asked hopefully. “I, um, could use some directions.”

“I…” Octavia averted her eyes. “I don’t know. I think, um. You don’t really have a penis, do you.” Celestia what I am saying.

“Last time I checked, I didn’t.” Vinyl glanced down. “No, I don’t. Uh. Maybe we should look up some porn magazines and-”

“Vinyl!” Octavia gaped loudly. “Porn?! How could you say that?!” The nerve! The audacity!

“What?” Vinyl shifted. “We’re legally adults. We can read porn. Porn is good. Porn is love. Porn is-”

“Reading porn is bad,” Octavia replied firmly. “And those who read it should feel bad.” She gazed pointedly at Vinyl.

“Hey, for your information, I have never held a porn mag in my hooves!” Vinyl turned round a little. “If I had, I’d’ve already sexed you good and nice!”

“Vinyl!” Octavia took a deep breath. On second thoughts, she wouldn’t mind Vinyl sexing her good and nice all that much… Brain. I’m warning you.

“It’s all right.” Vinyl’s face lit up with a grin. “I know exactly what to do.”

***

Lyra sat in the armchair and exhaled in content. She took her cup of tea and blew on the liquid softly. The chilly autumn evening was perfect for a little Lyra-time, alone with tea and the fireplace sounds on her playlist and the pencils and paper. A perfect evening for silent drawing while her marefriend was sleeping off the horrors of her exam.

The doorbell rang.

Lyra groaned, closing her eyes. There was no way in hell somepony would interrupt her little round-about-midnight drawing-time. Nopony had ever done that, who in their sane mind would-

“Of course.” Lyra took a breath and opened the door. “Yes, Vinyl?” She nodded towards the blushing grey mare. “Hello, Octavia.”

“Lyra!” Vinyl greeted her with a wide grin, making an attempt to come in, an attempt immediately blocked by the mint unicorn. “Sorry for interrupting you in the middle of whatever you’re doing, but Tavi and I were wondering…”

“Straight to the point, Scratch.” Lyra rubbed her eyelids.

Vinyl took a breath. “HOW THE HELL DO WE HAVE SEX?!”

***

Nopony knows about sex. I swear. It's such a grey spot that I tend to think all this hype around sex is made-up. Honestly, can it be so hard to put a penis in a vagina? But here comes the rub: what if there is no penis? Only a horn?.. okay, no, scratch that. Lyra can stick it up her ass.

Anyway, we're both too tired to follow her instructions tonight, and the next exam is tomorrow so I guess we can try it out again. If we survive the exam, that is.

- A very tired Octavia, October 8th