The Perks of Being a Wonderbolt

That sickeningly sweet, bubbly voice. There was only one pony I knew that practically radiated sugar in her voice besides that baker in Ponyville who I get all my pies from.

"Derpy Hooves?"

"Hiya, Soarin'!" The Pegasus poked her head in. "Wow. Nice place."

I rubbed my eyes. "Uh, thanks."

"So anyways, do you want your mail?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. Sure." I blinked. "Wait, WAIT, NO NO—"

A torrent of fan mail flooded the entire room. I howled, sticking a hoof up in the sea of paper, practically drowning.

"Don't worry, Soarin'! I'll save you!"

In the process of trying to dig my way out of the fan mail, a hoof dragged me out. I gasped for air, filling my lungs were desperation, coughing. I hacked up something terrible.

"Soarin'?"

I wheezed and coughed, struggling for air.

"Oh no! You're choking!"

And of course, I was trying to say, "I'm not choking!" Except I think I actually was choking on something. Maybe I'd swallowed a letter.

"Don't worry! I know CPR!"

"CPR?" I coughed, except it came out like, "BLAGARAGHAH", on account of me choking.

I figured that Derpy was at the very least, going to try and help me breathe. If she was going to lock lips with me, I would try and at least enjoy it OW!

"BREATHE!" Derpy screamed, pounding my chest. "BREATHE, I SAY!"

For the love of all that is holy, she really knew how to punch. I was 120% sure that you weren't supposed to punch a pony in the gut if they were suffocating, but hey, might as well go with the flo—ARGH! MY LIVER!

And then, I felt something soft on my lips. She was trying to help me breathe. It wasn't quite as glamorous as in the movies, on account of all the saliva.

I took a huge gasp and hacked up a stamp. "Thanks, Derp—mmgh!"

She was still trying to help me breathe. Or was she trying to kiss me? My mind was still groggy from having just woken up and the lack of oxygen to my brain, but I was pretty sure that you didn't use tongue in CPR. I didn't really mind. I think she just stole my first kiss. Kisses on the cheek definitely don't count. I couldn't really judge Derpy on her resuscitation (kissing?) abilities, but I would have given her a 10/10. She was really getting into it.

Not that I was complaining.

Derpy was smothering me with her lips. Now I was starting to complain.

I gently pushed her off of me, panting, blushing redder than a tomato. She, on the other hoof, looked completely fine. Not fine, like as in, a fine flank. I mean, her flank was very nice, but I didn't look, I swear. You know what I mean! Sure, she looked a bit concerned.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded, a little dazed, trying to process what had just happened. I could taste...something. I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek. I could still feel the warmth of her lips on mine. That was definitely a kiss. I think. It wasn't like, mind blowing, like a Sonic Rainboom or anything. It was just...nice. She didn't taste like muffins, surprisingly. I think she brushed her teeth.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks Derpy," I said, trying to be cool. "You know, you're supposed to deliver the fan mail to the stadium."

"Oh!" Her golden eyes moved slightly. "Whoops."

"It's okay." I scratched my head with a hoof. "I thought you worked in Ponyville."

"I do!" Derpy chirped, puffing out her chest a little. "But Cloudsdale is short one mailmare, and they said I was just the pony for the job." She paused. "Actually, I think I'm the only pony available, so they didn't have much of a choice."

Now it was just plain awkward. We were standing in the middle of a room flooded with letters and we'd just swapped spit.

"So," I clucked my tongue, "How are things?"

"Good!" she chirped. "It's been a while, huh?"

It took me a second, but it clicked in my head that she was talking about flight camp. "Oh! Oh yeah, huh."

"How are the Wonderbolts?"

"Great," I said without thinking.

Things weren't really great, but something weird about ponies is that sometimes they don't really mean what they say. Like, if somepony asks you how you're doing or how things are going, they don't actually want you to tell them. Going through the motions, or something. Imagine if every time you asked a pony, "How's it going?", they actually told you.

Derpy was just somepony I knew. We weren't close at all. Not even friends. I rarely ever saw her and the only time I ever heard about her was when she kinda messed things up. Catastrophically. I felt a little bad for her in flight camp, 'cause she got made fun of for her eyes.

"I'm gonna go wash up, okay?" I told her. "Just uh, clean up."

"Will do!" She saluted.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to wash the taste of her out of my mouth. It occurred to me that I couldn't exactly just smooch any hot piece of flank anywhere I went. I mean, I didn't really go about doing that kind of thing anyway. I was trying to save my first one for Spit, but Derpy kinda stole it. If any of the tabloids got this, there could have been some serious consequences. It's not like I was gonna lose my job, but ponies would think we were together.

When I came out of the shower all wet and steamy with my mane down, Derpy had finished gathering all the letters.

"You sure get a lot of fan mail," she said, not looking at me. When she did see me, her wings popped out and her eyes were wide.

I wanted to laugh. Just to tease her, I said, "Hey there, "my eyes half-lidded in the most sexy way I knew.

She folded her wings with some difficulty, her face flushed. Did I really look that good when my mane was down?

"I-I think I'll go now," Derpy said woozily, dragging the bag of letters behind her. "Um, bye, Soarin'!"

"Bye," I said, giving her my best winning hotshot grin. "See you around. We'll talk sometime, huh?"

"Um. Um." She bolted in a streak of gold. She probably flew through the floor.

I smirked a little, swallowing. Still no trace of muffins on my tongue. I shook my head.

"Just a little CPR," I muttered, trying to convince myself. "She was giving me CPR. That was it."

Thunderlane's words last night really bugged me. He was basically telling me to forget about Spit and find some other pony. But I couldn't just forget about her!

I remembered why I was so distracted yesterday. I was thinking about stuff, but it was also the weekend the next day, so no practice. Could you really blame me for being excited about Saturday?

Amidst the chaos known as my flat, I paused in between bites of some pumpkin pie, scanning the room. What kind of stallion did Spit want? After all these years of being close friends, I hardly knew. Did she go for the bad colts? Nice guys? I was a nice guy, I think. Why do people always say that nice guys finish last?

Well, in any case, I figured she wanted a guy with a clean house. With that, I resolved to begin cleaning up, starting with all the junk on the floor. I mean, it wasn't that bad. Some books on the floor here and there, scattered everywhere. Those went back on my dusty bookshelf in the back of my room. Some takeout and pizza boxes went into the trash, and my Wonderbolts suits went up on a coat hanger.

I surveyed my hard work, biting my lip. It looked more or less the same.

I sat down, picking up a newspaper, remembering a fond memory. It wasn't what was on the newspaper that got me.

"Tally ho, Soarin', away!"

I wheezed, carrying the heavy, squirming yellow filly on my back. "Spit, you're too heavy!"

"Be silent, my noble steed! We must go on to fight the dragon!" she cried, jabbing a hoof out with a ridiculously large newspaper hat on her head.

The dragon roared. "Rawr."

"That's not a good roar," she said.

"Why do I always have to be the dragon?" Thunderlane grumbled.

I cracked under pressure, dropping completely, panting, sinking into the cloud floor. Spit poked me a few times with her "sword".

"Wanna be pirates instead?" Thunderlane suggested.

"Yeah!"

Those were the days.

Now what had Thunderlane said? Ask Spit out to coffee and take it from there?

I reached for the phone, pausing. She probably wouldn't like it if I asked her on a date through phone. Best to see her face to face, right?

"Look out, world! Here comes Soarin'!" I struck a pose and ran out the door with a skip.