Backstage. She was backstage, out of view of the crowd, who were giving off meek, polite applause. The purple sunglasses covered her eyes, a mask to her current emotions; anger, failure. A grey earth pony was waiting for her, her flanks adorned with a pink treble clef, a worried and saddened expression on her face.
The glasses bearing mare walked past the grey one and proceeded to the long buffet table, looking for something to eat, before she realized she wasn’t hungry, just sick to the stomach. She was silent for a moment, then let out a saddened groan.
The grey mare started. “Vinyl, lo-“
“Don’t say anything,” the white one said, cutting her off. She pushed the glasses up above her eyes with a forehoof, leaving them to lay on her forehead. Her shocking crimson eyes showed an expression of sadness, and she sighed, bowing her head.
The grey one walked over and pushed up on the white one’s chin with a hoof, forcing her to look into her own purple eyes.
“What happened out there?” she asked.
The white one looked away, pushing the gray one off. “I don’t know, alright. And I don’t want to talk about it, Octavia.”
It was all the grey one could do to stop herself from gasping. Vinyl never called her by her full name. It was always “Tavi” or “Octy”, but never Octavia.
Vinyl looked over to a grey, aluminum tub, next to the buffet table, filled with ice. “I need a drink,” she said quietly, but harshly. Her horn glowed a red, matching her eyes, and a bottle of hard whiskey, enveloped in the same aura, flew towards her.
“No you don’t!” Octavia said, grabbing the neck of the bottle by her teeth as it flew by, stopping its gravitational pull towards Vinyl Scratch.
The white mare tried pulling it again. “Yes… I… do!” she said. The bottle continued to be magically pulled towards Vinyl, but its speed slowed under Octavia’s iron grip as the grey mare was dragged along.
The other mare let out a muffled “No… you… don’t!” as she held onto the alcohol, trying to pull it back. Vinyl eventually sighed and dropped the magical pull around it, and Octavia put it on the buffet table, not bothering to set it upright and letting it flop onto its side. She moved herself so she was positioned between the beverage and the DJ.
“You can’t drown away all your sorrows, Vinyl.”
“Oh, what, you’ve never had a drink before?”
“I’m not a Celestiadamned alcoholic about it!”
“I’m not an alcoholic!”
Octavia sighed. “Maybe not, but you still can’t just drink all your problems away.”
“It’s worked before,” Vinyl retorted back and made a lunge for the bottle. Octavia simply sidestepped and put herself in the way again.
“No you can’t. It’s not healthy,” she scolded.
“Don’t tell me how to live my life. You’re not my therapist.”
Octavia blinked. “You have a therapist?”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT,” Vinyl retorted. “Look, I’m ticked off, too tired to do anything about it, and there’s an unopened bottle of alcohol right behind you.”
Octavia stuck out her tongue. And that’s when Vinyl pounced on her.
“Ow! Stop hitting me!”
“Just give me my- ow! Just give me my stupid drink!”
What began as yelling soon devolved into angry gibberish as the two continued to fight, hooves flying every which way, not many actually connecting. Eventually, the musicians both collapsed in an exhausted, pained heap on the floor.
Silence. The two breathed heavily, hurt and tired from their brief scuffle consisting of little more than them attempting to hit
each and failing miserably.
Octavia spoke first. “That hurt,” she said, pointing out the obvious.
“Thank you for your divine observational skills, Ms. Von Clef.”
“Shush, you.”
The two remained silent for a moment, and eventually Vinyl sat up, Octavia joining her soon after.
“Vinyl, what happened out there? It’s not like you to just mess up a show like that.”
Vinyl sighed. She reached over for her glasses, which had fallen off her head in the initial struggle, and placed them next to her. She looked into their lenses rather than Octavia.
“I guess I was… nervous? I dunno. ‘Tavi, you don’t get it. There were record deal guys out there. They were there to watch me.” She sighed again and bowed her head, looking down at the floor. “And I blew it. I freaking blew it.”
Silence for a moment. Octavia looked away while she considered what she had just heard. Vinyl… nervous? Celestia, this was big for her….
The earth pony heard a sniffle and looked over at the unicorn. “Are you… crying?”
“No!” Vinyl blurted, quickly jerking her head up. If she was trying to hide the small trickle of tears in her eyes, she didn’t do a good job of it.
“You are!” Octavia said, stunned. She’d never seen her cry before. Vinyl never seemed like the type of pony to cry. She always acted tough. Always joking. Always drinking. This was a bigger shock to her than that one time when she tried to repair her large set of amplifiers in the living room (which did not end well, for the record).
“Shut up! No I’m not!” Vinyl choked out, looking away.
The grey earth pony walked over. “Come here….”
“No! Leave me alone!” Vinyl protested.
Octavia ignored her and continued walking over. She wrapped her forearms around the DJ, giving her a hug. Vinyl was silent for a moment, then hugged her back, squeezing her, sobbing into Octavia’s shoulder.
They stayed like that for a minute, the white one sobbing openly and the gray one holding her, comforting her. Vinyl spoke up, pulling her head slightly off Octavia’s shoulder. “It’s just…” she sniffed. “It’s just… what if I’m not good enough? What if I’m not going anywhere with this whole DJ’ing thing?” Vinyl reached up and rubbed her own nose with a forehoof. She had stopped crying for the most part, but was still sniffling. She rested her head back on Octavia’s shoulder, the two still sharing the hug.
“Now you listen to me, DJ P0N3”, she said. “You’re good. You just… you messed up one night.” Octavia tried to think of ways to comfort her friend. “There’ll be more chances, Vinyl. Don’t be sad. It’s not the end of the world.”
“But… but what if they don’t come back? The guys from the record companies, I mean.”
“Vinyl Scratch, if they judge you based on only one of your shows, they don’t deserve to have someone as good as you be signed to them.”
More silence between the two.
After a couple minutes, Vinyl sniffed, then tightened the hug. “Thank you, Octy….” The unicorn let herself out of the hug and looked into the earth pony’s purple eyes, smiling. Vinyl’s own eyes were red – well, more so than usual – from the crying, but there were no more tears flowing from them.
Vinyl walked over and put her glasses over her eyes, then said somewhat awkwardly “It’s, uh, getting kinda late. Wanna spend the night at my place?”
Octavia laughed. “With pleasure, Ms. Scratch.”
Vinyl was still hurting about what happened and where her life was going. But as the two left the building, she knew that with a great friend like Octavia around to help, she just might be alright.