It occurred to me that I had never kissed my partner. We had been dating for months, and the most I had done was a peck on the cheek. Now, this wasn’t because of some deep, underlying problem.
He was a griffon. I was a unicorn. And I had no idea how to kiss someone with a beak.
In theory, all I needed to do was ask, but between the two of us, I had always been the shy one. Under normal circumstances, the words would have died in my throat, but tonight they didn’t even get that far. Gerard and I were going on a date, and I was so anxious that asking wouldn’t even cross my mind.
I dropped off the tram a short distance from the cinema, one of the many in downtown Manehattan, and trotted the rest of the way there. Gerard waited for me in front of the stone building, wrapped in his blue coat and white gambler hat.
He didn’t spot me in the crowds until I was already next to him.
“Evening, luv,” Gerard greeted, wrapping a wing over my withers. I responded by pressing against his barrel, comfy and secure, both from the cool autumn air and any curious onlookers. He looked at my white suit and added. “You’re looking nice.”
“Mmm-h.” I hummed under his wing. “You too. What are we watching?”
“I was thinking about Across the Oceans. My friends said it’s good, and that it even has sound.”
“Really!?” I perked up, pushing my head from its feathery cocoon. “How’d they do that?”
“I’ve no idea. Want to see it?”
He didn’t need to ask twice. The idea of a moving picture with sound was too enticing to ignore. Gerard led us through the throng, effortlessly parting it like an icebreaker broke a frozen sea.
Warmth greeted us inside. Electric lamps hanging from the ceiling cast the lobby in a warm golden glow. The press of the mass lessened as the lines parted into several smaller ones, and soon we had passed our coats to the staff, and gotten our tickets. As I looked around, I spotted most of the ponies moved in pairs or a few small groups.
There, a pegasus and an earth pony were lost in each other’s eyes. In a slightly secluded corner, two unicorns gave each other a quick kiss.
“Gerard, is it some kind of couples night?”
“Yes,” he answered smugly. “The tickets were at half-price for couples.”
“Of course they were,” I muttered with all the love I had for him. Gerard merely chuckled and led me to the auditorium. As we entered the dark hall, my thoughts lingered briefly on the little affections I had seen, and in the cover of the lightless corridor I wanted to also kiss him.
Across the Oceans was a romance.
The couple was separated by an ocean, both desperate to cross it to find each other.
I adored the sappy declarations of love, brought to life by the actors’ voices, unlike anything I had ever seen before.
While I was focused on the film, Gerard spent more time watching me than it, smiling from ear to ear until the finale. After all the trials, as the couple shared their final passionate kiss, my earlier thoughts rushed back into my head, and my expression fell.
I only noticed when Gerard lay a claw on my hoof. I looked up at him, and he met my gaze with a concerned look. I just waved him off. I didn’t want to explain it here.
Once we were outside, he once again looked at me with concern. ”Everything alright?”
“Yeah, just thought of something.”
“Don’t want to talk about it?”
“Not here,” I answered. Gerard simply nodded and started to clear a path to the tram line. It was even colder now, and I again pushed myself under his wing. With my earlier giddiness gone, I now spotted several ponies giving us odd looks and found myself huddling even closer to him.
“My place or yours?” He asked.
“Yours, please. It’s closer.”
We jumped in the first tram heading that way. In the half-empty cart, a couple like us was noticeable, and I saw even more curious and hostile looks.
My griffon meanwhile seemed unbothered by the stares, and with that beak of his he could either shout or bite any troublemaker into submission… and there my mind was again focused on his beak. He caught me looking, and shifted his face in confusion. “Is there something on my beak?”
We made it to his home, a single room on the sixth floor of an apartment block. The landlady barely acknowledged us, busy with her evening tea. The moment we were in Gerard’s room, and spun me around.
“Now, something’s bothering you. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Well…” The words were not coming out, but I couldn’t just leave him worried like that. “...umm, well. We’ve never kissed?”
My answer seemed to genuinely confuse Gerard, who tilted his head. “Well, we can do that if you want to.”
“I… don’t know- how to kiss someone with a beak.”
Gerard no longer looked at me with concern, but amusement. He took both my hooves in his talons, with enough room to still caress my cheek with his thumb, one talon stroking my chin. Warmth flooded my face as I felt almost trapped in his grip. And all the while he was licking his beak.
“Gerard?”
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a smooch. Passionate and without an ounce of finesse, but full of love. My brain became a mess of uninterrupted white noise until he finally leaned back.
“Like that.”
Eep! Eep? Eep.
My thoughts returning, I opened my mouth. “Eep.”
Wrong thought.
“Again?” I asked. In response, Gerard picked me up in both talons, hoisting me into the air so I could look down at him. Grinning madly, he pulled me in for a new kiss.
