The City

Chapter 6

“Tavi! C’mere!”

Octavia halted the movement of her bow, stopping in the middle of a series of sweeping arpeggios. She’d been stymied in her composition for the better part of an hour now, and her solution to such situations was always to let her hooves go on autopilot and allow her mind to drift until the next phrase revealed itself.

“What is it, love?”

“Just c’mon!” Vinyl called excitedly from across the room. Happy for a break, Octavia set her cello on its stand and trotted over to where her partner sat at her extravagant arrangement of keyboards. The entire area was littered with crumpled parchment, empty bottles, depleted pens and broken quills. They had more or less been living in the studio for the past four months, and hadn’t exactly been keeping the place tidy. A partially-drained bottle of whiskey and an empty tumbler sat precariously on the end of one of the synthesizers, and the cellist stealthily grabbed both and set them out of sight, not wanting anything to be spilt, and also hoping that the already-swaying DJ might just forget about them and sober up a bit before dinner.

“Well then, what do you have for me?” she asked as Vinyl scribbled on a page, humming softly to herself.

“The intro,” the unicorn replied with a wide grin, her heavily-lidded, bloodshot eyes and the dark circles beneath speaking of someone who was long-overdue for a decent night of sleep. While Octavia had been working on several songs at once, the spiky-haired DJ had been agonizing over the same eight bars for the past four days – the introduction to the song that was to be the opening track of their new concept album. At this point, the small segment of music had undergone several hundred revisions, each of which Octavia had said was lovely and Vinyl had scrapped with ever-mounting frustration. Now, however, she looked extremely pleased with herself, albeit in an exhausted, disheveled sort of way.

“Go on, then.”

Vinyl blinked a few times, having seemingly forgotten that she couldn’t just communicate the idea telepathically, and would actually have to play it. She turned, orienting herself on the bench and assuming a posture that would ruin any classical piano instructor’s day, nearly striking a chord before she stopped and turned to face Octavia once again.

“Now, just understand,” she cautioned, holding up a hoof, “it’s not going to sound as good without the drums and the violins.”

“Noted.”

The unicorn returned once more to her playing position. Her hooves had just touched the keys when the notes were hastily aborted, and she looked back again.

“Now, I kn–”

“Oh just get on with it.”

Vinyl laughed nervously, exhaled, and began to play a series of bold, clear major chords as a foundation, using her magic to supply a slow, simple, but catchy melody on a second set of keys. It was only meant to be played once, but was structured so that it could be repeated ad infinitum, and so she ran through it three more times. It was entirely devoid of the bells and whistles that had characterized its earlier incarnations, relying less on the notes themselves and more on the intonation and phrasing with which they were played. There was nothing inherently melancholy about the tune, but the forceful, deliberate execution conjured a feeling of gloom within Octavia’s chest.

It was perfect.

“It’s absolutely perfect, Vinyl,” the gray mare said gently and evenly, afraid that any critical misstep might result in this version being scrapped and revised a hundred more times, which was something she did not want to happen for a wide variety of reasons.

“Aww c’mon, you’re just saying that,” Vinyl moaned, “give it to me straight.”

“Vinyl, I liked the first version…”

“Okay, I’ll go back and work off of that th–”

“No, hush. I liked the first version, the second, and the several hundred after that, some of which were absolutely beautiful. But this one is perfect, please do not change it.”

“So…we’re almost there, huh?”

“Vinyl Scratch,” Octavia huffed, snatching the sheet music out from under the delirious DJ’s meddling gaze, “I am taking this from you, I am keeping it, and I don’t care if you make a thousand more, it’s what we’re putting on the record.”

“Okay, okay,” Vinyl conceded, seemingly satisfied by a response this passionate. Even so, Octavia folded up the paper and held onto it, not willing to take any risks at this point. While she was a perfectionist herself in a general sense, her fillyfriend had an alarming tendency to get stuck in loops of compulsive rewriting, and while it could often produce some incredibly well-refined, admirable work, it could just as often result in the destruction of such work. To a certain degree, she had to defer to Vinyl in matters such as hooking an audience, but she also had to know when to make an executive decision.

“Hey, Tavi,” the summons interrupted her thoughts, “you seen my drink anywhere?” Vinyl’s was turning around and around, searching in random directions and places in the haphazard manner characteristic of someone who knows they’ve lost something, but isn’t nearly compos enough to even come up with a reasonable starting point for her efforts.

“No, love, I…” Octavia’s words caught in her throat. She wanted to, but she couldn’t, she shouldn’t, and in the end it wouldn’t matter. “Yeah, it’s down there,” she pointed to the glass and the bottle of whiskey, “by the monitor.”

“Oh,” Vinyl seemed perplexed, seizing the vessel of amber liquid with her magic, “I must be out of it.”

“I was hoping you might perk up a bit before dinner.”

“Okay, one more for the road…” she took another gulp before setting the now mostly-empty bottle down at its old, perilous spot on the edge of one synth, “and I’m done. I could probably use some coffee, too. Want some?”

“I’m alright.”

“Aright. Anyway, is there some special occasion I should know about?” the unicorn queried with some apprehension, “because I know it’s not our anniversary.” The last statement was made with quiet certainty.

“No, not really,” Octavia admitted, “I was just hoping we could actually sit down and have a meal…at the table…with food that didn’t come out of a box.”

“But...that’s where macaroni comes from,” Vinyl protested.

“Vinyl, do you really want macaroni again?” the cellist sighed.

“N-No…”

“Very well, macaroni it is then,” Octavia chuckled, rolling her eyes, “but I’m taking some artistic license with it this time.”

At this point Octavia’s definition of “artistic license” was beginning to seem more like “reinvention”. She’d been in the kitchen for what seemed like an eternity, though honestly it was probably something more along the lines of an hour. Regardless, it far exceeded the amount of time required to prepare macaroni, that much was certain. Still, for Vinyl, it was far from an inconvenience. She sat at the dining room table – for some reason it had been insisted upon that they use the fancy table – sipping a glass of cream sherry and listening to an enchanting, wordless song that drifted in over the scent of cooking food. It awakened old memories like quenched embers miraculously returning to flame – memories of countless evenings just like this one, all of which had been taken for granted. The light from the chandelier above was soft, the air was pleasantly warm, and the switch to wine had left a pleasant fog in the sleepy DJ’s mind. This was the type of moment that she’d never even dared to long for, something she’d shut out of her mind for years upon years, for fear that the thought of a future forever devoid of such pleasant normalcies might break her heart one final, fatal time.

In short, this was heaven.

Vinyl suddenly found herself much more mentally present than she had any right to be, and it took her a few moments before she realized why. The meandering humming that had formed the soundtrack to the last hour of her life had suddenly shifted into a familiar tune. There lyrics were absent, but they were not needed; any little filly or colt could’ve named it in a heartbeat. It was something she hadn’t heard for a very, very long time.

Octavia sauntered into the dimly-lit dining room, and even in the half-light, the smile on her face was radiant. The tray balanced effortlessly on her back held a dish of some yet unknown but undoubtedly delicious cuisine, and in its center stood a single, sparkling candle. With flawless timing, she set the food down in front of Vinyl just as the song reached its coda, ending it with a kiss on the cheek.

“Happy birthday, my love.”

Vinyl Scratch stared open-mouthed at the flickering flame before her. The candle to which it belonged was planted in what she now found to be the most decadent-looking macaroni that she – and possibly the world – had ever seen.

It wasn’t just that she’d forgotten her own birthday, it was that she had forgotten birthdays were even a thing that happened. In the beginning, some had tried to acknowledge them in various ways – Neon might bring her a gift; Lyra and Bon Bon would offer to take her to dinner; the Melodies would show up at her door with a cake and a smile. But Vinyl didn’t want any of that. Birthdays were happy occasions, and she didn’t want to be happy because it didn’t feel right. The idea of unwrapping presents and thanking somepony for another meaningless material possession while Octavia was somewhere out in the cold, or more likely dead, made her feel sick to her stomach and yearn for a drink, and when she inevitably took it and the dozen more that had to follow, any pretense of levity was sent straight to Tartarus. One by one, they’d stopped trying, and after the last brightly-wrapped gift had been refused, her only metric for the passage of time had been the number of days, weeks, months, and years since the world had come crashing down.

“Go on, make a wish,” Octavia said.

Vinyl didn’t have a wish to make, because she’d only ever had two – one that had already come true, and another that never could. Still, not wanting to spoil the moment by letting wax drip into their food, she blew out the candle and wished for the impossible thing anyway. Octavia gave her another peck on the cheek and then made the journey around the impractically large table to take the seat across from her.

Vinyl just stared at her for a moment. The past few months had been exceedingly kind to Octavia. Hot showers and a rigorous grooming regimen had expunged the ratty, matted patches from her coat, leaving in their stead the well-conditioned, lustrous shine that it had always possessed in their past life. Most of her scars weren’t even visible anymore. Her mane had grown back in, and while it wasn’t nearly as long as it used to be, it looked infinitely better than the short-cropped styling she’d sported upon her return. Possibly the most noticeably change, however, was her physique. While she was still lean by any definition of the word, there was a softness that had begun to return to her figure which obscured to a certain degree the sinuous, hard-forged frame beneath. In short, she was no longer some strange version of Octavia; she was Octavia proper, or at least very close.

None of it mattered to Vinyl personally, but a younger Octavia had always been very preoccupied with her looks, and so it was a concern by proxy. Only the mostly missing ear and the accompanying scar across her cheek marred the otherwise-perfect vision of elegance that was her beloved Miss Melody.

Vinyl must have been staring a little too hard, as the expression on Octavia’s face changed from jovial to slightly worried.

“Vinyl…did you honestly forget your birthday? I thought you were just playing along with me earlier.”

“Nah…I’m just wasted.”

“Is everything all right, dear heart?”

“Heh, yeah,” Vinyl smiled, stealthily – or so she hoped – wiping away a few tears. Deciding to keep things moving, she removed the candle from the dish in front of her and spooned some of its contents onto her plate before passing it over to Octavia. Never one for observing table manners and also suddenly aware of how long it had been since her last meal, she dug in. It was glorious. “This…” she was at a loss for words, but only for a moment, “this is better than your dad’s grilled cheese.”

Octavia stopped in the middle of serving herself, her eyebrows going up.

“Do you mean that?” she asked, almost breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Vinyl confirmed with another bite, “yeah I do.”

“Well well,” the gray mare smirked haughtily, “I think we were about due to visit my parents anyway.”

Vinyl snickered, forgetting her somber mood.

“Take it easy on the old guy,” she cautioned, “don’t crush his pride all at once…do it slowly so I can watch.”

“Don’t be cruel to the elderly, Vinyl; life already has been,” Octavia chided.

“Tavi, am I old?” The DJ asked so suddenly it took her a moment to realize the question had slipped past her lips.

“Age is just a number, love,” her partner responded, not missing a beat.

“Yeah,” she continued, suddenly inordinately concerned by the thought, “and I’m scared the number’s too high.”

Octavia put down her fork, resting her hooves under her chin and smiling from across the table.

“My dear Vinyl,” she said soothingly, “you are not old. We are not old. We’re not quite young anymore, I’ll grant you that, but I’d hazard that we’ve a few more good years left in us. So just stop thinking like that, eat up, and then you can have your presents.”

“Presents?”

“Yes.”

Gifts were not something that mattered to Vinyl Scratch in the sense that they did to most people. When she was younger they had, because every birthday or Hearth’s Warming had been a chance for her to acquire more equipment and instruments that she couldn’t purchase in good conscience with the modest living she earned gigging around Southspire. However, when she’d reached a point where she could afford literally anything, presents lost their appeal; instead of potentially useful, they just became more objects, objects that – had she wanted them – she would’ve bought herself. Some part of her knew that this was a bleak, depressing, and selfish way of looking at the idea, and that she should value the thought behind the gift rather than the stuff itself, but in recent years she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to give a damn.

Strange, then, was the childlike excitement she felt looking at three neatly-wrapped packages on the table in front of her. These weren’t the trifles sent as formalities by the few members of her family she still had contact with, nor were they the predictable booze and weird jewelry she would never wear that Neon always came up with; these were things that Octavia had selected for her, and that made them the greatest gifts she’d ever received, regardless of what they actually might be.

“Start with this,” Octavia – who now sat next to her – instructed, sliding over the first impeccably-wrapped, color-coordinated box. Vinyl picked it up with her hooves and shook it, tapping her chin thoughtfully before removing the paper and opening the small cardboard sleeve within. What came out made her instantly erupt into raucous laughter. She should’ve seen it coming, but it had been so long that she was completely blindsided. Back when they’d first started dating, Octavia had gone through a short and largely unsuccessful phase in which she’d attempted to get Vinyl to take better care of the spiky, tangled mess that was her mane. The blueberry-scented conditioner she now lazily applied when showering had been a concession in that battle. The first birthday present she’d ever received from her then-newly-deemed fillyfriend had been a hairbrush – an object which she had prided herself on using in a plethora of ways, none of them being the one intended. That brush had finally met its end acting as a pry bar when its owner had – for scientific reasons – gotten a very embarrassing personal item wedged in her toaster. While its sacrifice had in fact freed said item from its entrapment, it had regardless been the general consensus that the toaster in question should no longer be used to prepare food, at least not for guests. Thereafter, it had become customary for her to receive a new brush each year, and to find new ways to misuse and eventually destroy it.

“Thank you, Tavi,” the DJ giggled, “I shall see that it meets the same fate as its brethren.”

“As it should,” Octavia smiled, nodding primly, “now open this one,” she offered another wrapped package. It was surprisingly heavy for something so small, which Vinyl knew increased the likelihood that it was either expensive or hilarious. Under the wrapping was a plain but well-crafted wooden box. She raised the lid, and her eyes were met by shiny, brightly-colored plastic that made her smile grow wider.

“I figured if I put them inside something heavy enough, you might not lose them all at once,” her partner commented knowingly. “There’s a thousand in there, should last you six months at the very least.”

Vinyl lifted one of the guitar picks with her magic and examined it more closely. It was stiff and heavy – exactly as she preferred them. It was a two-toned blue that closely approximated her mane, but in the center were two magenta ovals outlined by a black frame that resembled her trademark shades. Below them, embossed in gold, were the initials “V.S.”

“These are fancy,” she observed, honestly impressed. She’d always exercised a philosophy of brute force when playing the guitar – this being the very reason she burned through picks and strings at such an alarming rate – and part of her was sad that a dozen or more of them would likely meet their demise by the week’s end.

“Only the best for the best,” Octavia cooed sappily yet earnestly. Vinyl responded with a hug.

“Thanks, Tavi. You really know me too well.”

“No such thing. Now, we’re…not quite done.”

The last gift was offered. Vinyl had never considered herself overly empathic; in her youth she’d been more than a bit of a narcissist, and it was only through age, her own efforts, and the love of the mare seated next to her that she’d become more in tune with other peoples’ feelings. This fact being considered, as well as her not being particularly sober at the moment, she was alarmed by how anxious Octavia looked watching her unwrap this final present. Underneath the paper was a box of blue velvet that even someone as unacquainted with finery as she recognized was the type that usually contains jewelry. She already had it halfway open before the implications dawned in full.

Within was a band of polished platinum, obviously sized to fit on her horn. Set into it was a large, dark-blue sapphire that made a clear statement without venturing into the territory of gaudiness. It was flanked by two similar ones of a slightly lighter hue, and to the side of each of those in turn was a smaller diamond. The coloration matched her own perfectly. If there was any doubt as to what this was – and there really wasn’t – Octavia instantly put it to rest.

“I had a whole speech prepared,” the gray mare explained, “but for some reason out of all the important moments in my life, I picked this one to start feeling self-conscious about sounding like a sap.”

Vinyl said nothing, staring at the ring as three warring trains of thought struggled for dominance in her psyche. Half of her couldn’t believe this was happening, half of her couldn’t see any other logical progression to their situation but this, and all of her was astonished that she was the one being asked and not the one doing the asking. There was a very expensive piece of jewelry which had been sitting in the back of one of her dresser drawers for the past twelve years that she suddenly no longer needed.

“Vinyl Scratch,” Octavia prompted, leaving her seat and resting on her haunches in front of the dumbstruck unicorn, “I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you – if that wasn’t already apparent – and I don’t want to wait any longer, so please marry me, if you wouldn’t mind terribly.”

“Yeah,” Vinyl whispered, not wanting to hesitate for a millisecond, “that sounds just about perfect.”

“Yeah?” Octavia questioned with shimmering eyes that betrayed utter vulnerability. The look of joy and relief that lit up her features suggested that the anticipation of possible rejection had been very real.

“Yes…” Vinyl confirmed with warm finality, “and now, if it’s cool with you, I’m gonna cry.”

An indeterminate number of hours later, two somewhat exhausted mares lay curled up together on the living room couch that Vinyl was so fond of. A very celebratory dinner had dampened their inhibitions to the point that making the trek to the bedroom seemed unnecessary despite the very large glass doors that occupied the wall behind them. They had no immediate neighbors, so the only passing pony that would’ve gotten a free show would be one trespassing in their backyard.

“Vinyl, your back is a bloody warzone,” Octavia chided, massaging intently, not sparing any of her considerable strength in the quest to iron out all the knots. After having worked the area around a particular vertebra for a solid ten minutes, she was rewarded with an audible pop and a grateful moan.

“Sweet merciful Celestia,” her unicorn counterpart sighed with relief, “that’s been aching like crazy for the past week.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me? And what in Equestria has you so tense?”

“It’s…down…down and r– mmm …that friggin’ song, it was driving me nuts,” Vinyl said in a failed attempt at sounding exasperated.

“You never got this anxious way back when.”

“Tavi…” the DJ attempted to roll over and look her partner in the eye, but was held in place.

“No, no, you stay put.”

“Tavi,” she began again, happily complying, “I’m trying to break out of this rut I’ve gotten into. I can’t make more of the same garbage. More importantly, this is going to be our first album together since…our first album. I have to make it perfect, or at least as close as possible.”

“As long as you keep your heart in it as much as your head, I know it will be,” the cellist reassured, cracking another section of spine with a firm push of her hoof and receiving an orgasmic groan as a reward.

“If we ever get sick of music,” Vinyl mused, stretching contentedly, “you could have a career as a masseuse.”

“Would you really want your future wife putting her hooves all over other ponies.”

“Point taken. Still, where and how did you get so good at this?”

“I’m not good at it, love,” the gray mare countered, “you’re just wound tighter than a steel spring.”

“Whatever, just don’t stop…”

There was a long silence in which Octavia simply concentrated on the area around Vinyl’s neck, an annoying uncertainty gnawing at the back of her mind.

“Vinyl?”

“Mmm?”

“How long do you think it will take to finish the album?”

“Like…ow…ah…finished product?”

“Yeah.”

“It depends,” Vinyl said thoughtfully, her voice cracking on the last syllable as kneading hooves moved down the small of her back and then below, “but assuming we keep going like we’re going, we’ll be finished writing it in a couple months. After that it’s just a matter of the easy stuff. I’d say a week or two to record it and then another week for me to put it all together. So we’re looking at maybe three more months, four tops.”

“You think so?” the cellist wondered, feeling a bit of relief.

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, I just realized that my timing might’ve been ill-considered,” Octavia admitted, pausing to take a less-than-dainty swig from her wineglass, “I didn’t want to try and plan a wedding and finish a record at the same time, but I’m not keen on the idea of postponing either for too long. To be honest, I thought it would be something more along the lines of a year.”

“Nah, don’t worry babe,” Vinyl said with tranquil confidence, “we’ll have this thing locked up in a few months. If there’s one thing I’ve gotten good at, it’s cutting down production time. Then we can finally get hitched.”

“I like the sound of that,” Octavia smiled, “except that the phrase ‘get hitched’ sounds a bit tacky.”

“Sorry,” Vinyl apologized as sincerely as she could given that she was legitimately relaxing for the first time in nearly half a year, “I just…saying ‘get married’ sounds so…girly.”

“Says the mare who cried for an hour after she was proposed to.”

“Cut me some slack, I’d just had the most amazing macaroni of my life. It was making me emotional.”

“If you hadn’t openly wept the first time you had my father’s grilled cheese, I’d be tempted to call that a copout,” Octavia said with some measure of suspicion.

“Speaking of that,” Vinyl replied pensively, “we should call your parents.”

“It’s a bit late, they’re probably asleep.”

“Wow, if I ever get so old that everypony’s afraid to wake me up for major life events, please kill me,” Vinyl groaned, punctuating the sentiment with a cough.

“Stop smoking so much, or it’ll be a moot point.”

Rather than laughter or some form of protest, the gray mare received only another cough in reply.

“I…I don’t feel so hot,” the DJ commented lethargically, her words coming out with a bit more slur than what would normally be expected.

“Yes, you do, you’re burning up, Vinyl,” Octavia started when she touched a hoof to her partner’s forehead, “wait right here, I–”

She was cut off as the increasingly delirious unicorn began to tremble, a cold sweat already visible on her brow.

“Tavi, I feel sick,” Vinyl mumbled, her eyes dilated and unfocused. She in turn was cut off by something halfway between a retch and a cough. “Can you get me some water?”

“I think you need an ambulance,” Octavia said hoarsely, hopping to her hooves about to make a dash for the telephone.

“No, don’t,” the DJ said with a little more coherence and surprising finality, “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Tavi, please,” she said as emphatically as she could given the circumstances, her voice sounding even weaker upon speaking the next words, “just trust me.”

Octavia was, to say the least, conflicted. Time and experience had taught her to go with her gut and never second-guess herself – in most situations it had served her well, and the few scrapes it had gotten her into instead of out of were an acceptable price to pay. This, however, was not most situations; this was Vinyl. Thinking she’d decided to play it safe, she continued her dash toward the telephone, only to find herself changing course at the last second to the nearby kitchen door. Before she even realized that her resolve had wavered, she was back by the couch, hoofing a glass of ice water to her now sweat-drenched fiancée.

“Thanks,” Vinyl whispered with hoarse gratitude in between gulps, “I’ll be okay in a minute here,” she said with quiet confidence, “this happens sometimes. I just need to lay off the drinks for a few days.”

“What do you mean this ‘happens sometimes’?” the Octavia demanded, sitting down next to her and glaring.

“It just does…it started last y–”

“Vinyl, you need to stop drinking.”

“What?”

“Do not act intentionally dense,” the cellist snapped, irritated that there was nothing solid to pound her hoof on without assuming a distractingly awkward posture, “I know it and you know it. You were a delirious mess when I came back here, and you’re hardly better now. I didn’t say anything because…” she trailed off and then sighed heavily, all her anger completely draining and leaving only worry and exhaustion. She placed a foreleg over the still-shaking mare’s shoulders and pressed on, “I didn’t say anything for a lot of reasons; at first, I honestly didn’t feel like I had any right to – I’d just walked back into your life without any sort of warning, and I wasn’t sure if I even had a place here anymore…I didn’t want to make you angry, either – not when things felt so uncertain. And I suppose – as much as I hate to say it – it was comforting, in a way. It made me feel like nothing had changed, that we could just pick the party back up where we left it, and I could forget that so much time had passed. I wanted to believe that we could still be young and invincible, but we’re not. You can’t keep doing this…”

“Tavi, it’s not that big a d–”

“Don’t!” Octavia cried shrilly, causing her partner to start; she was on the very edge of losing control. She waited for a moment and collected herself. “You barely eat,” she continued with deliberate evenness, “you don’t sleep until I tell you to, or you just fall unconscious in a chair or at your keyboard, and half the time when you wake up I’m not sure you even realize you were out…”

“Well,” Vinyl began with a good measure of force returning to her voice, “we’ve been working really hard on the album; I think it’s worth missing dinner or losing a little sleep over, don’t you?”

Octavia looked her square in the eye with as neutral a countenance as she could manage.

“Tell me it was different before, then. Tell me you took care of yourself.”

“I…” the lie died on the first syllable. The expression that formed in its death knell was one of utter defeat – a mixture of fatigue, acquiescence, and dawning realization. “No, I guess it wasn’t any different.”

“Vinyl,” the gray mare spoke gently, offering a long kiss on the neck to soften the weighty request she was about to make, “we’ve been given a second chance, here. I don’t want it to end before it’s even started. Please,” she took her lover’s head in her hooves and stared into her reddening, glossy eyes, “please stop. For me. So we can be together a little bit longer.”

“Tavi…I don’t know if I can.”

“You can try. You’d be surprised what happens if you just try.”

Vinyl Scratch hesitated for a long moment, and it was more than obvious that she was on the cusp of losing something whose importance the average, mentally-sound individual could not really comprehend. At length she cautiously uttered a single word:

“Okay.”