Vinyl rubbed sleep out of her eyes and tried to open them against what appeared to be the full force of the sun. Her head roared with pain and the unicorn reflexively pulled on the spell she’d learned ages ago for relieving hangovers. Immediately the world became more bearable. The roar quieting down to some petulant growling and the full force of the sun being reduced to a crack of light breaking in between the cracks of heavy curtains that felt like death to look at in more than glimpses.
Sitting up, Vinyl started running through the mental checklist of how weird her situation was. She’d developed the checklist for waking up with horrendous hangovers over years of careful study of being drunk off her flank in college. Inability to remember getting good and snookered the previous night; pretty standard. Unfamiliar bed; not an uncommon place to end up. Attractive but unfamiliar mare; happens about half the time for all unfamiliar bed situations. Attractive but unfamiliar mare isn’t immediately seeing her to the door twelve seconds after she woke up; that’s a little off of the standard course for things. Attractive but unfamiliar mare asking if you wanted something to eat; alright this’s getting weird.
“I’m sorry,” Vinyl said, rubbing a hoof against an ear, “Could you repeat that?”
The gray mare turned from where she was brushing her hair in a vanity mirror. “I asked if you’d like some breakfast. I can make something simple for you if you like, though I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to sleep in some more after… how busy we were last night.” The mare blushed and looked away from where Vinyl half lay, still tangled in the sheets.
Vinyl paled slightly, or as much as a white mare can pale.
“And… I want to thank you,” the other mare continued quietly, “Last night was… wonderful… I don’t think any pony has ever been so caring and attentive to my needs before…”
Vinyl’s eye twitched as she tried to fit the words coming out of the other mare’s mouth into the standard view Vinyl usually had of the world and failed repeatedly.
“I know last night at the club I told you I didn’t want to make this more than a onetime thing like you wanted… But after last night I was hoping maybe if you were still interested we could spend more time together?” the mare finished, an innocent hopeful note at the end.
Having found paling to be a lacking response to the situation Vinyl began to gray. Her mind churned, working overtime trying to remember anything from the previous night after she’d finished her night’s work. Anything to explain what seemed to be a radical change in character for her.
The mare appeared to take Vinyl’s silence as quiet consideration and pressed forward. “If you still wanted to meet my parents we could go have dinner with them tonight,” she suggested gently.
There was a small explosive sound as Vinyl’s mind finally ground to a halt and gave up any attempts to get a handle on the situation. Steam leaked from her ears as she stared into the space in front of her with a frozen expression of horror. After a moment the unicorn slumped back down to a laying position of sorts, dead to the world but still staring straight ahead with a look of inexorable shock and confusion.
Octavia smirked and turned back to finish brushing out her mane, any trace of the innocent inexperienced mare gone from her eyes. It had been worth waiting in the guest bedroom for the unicorn to wake up. She would explain later that she’d only found her stinking of drink, half passed out on the street, and continually “turning left” in a circle around one lamppost. She had brought the unicorn back to her apartment to sleep it off only because they were nearer to her apartment than the nearest guard outpost. She would explain this, but only after the unicorn woke and frantically tried to disentangle herself from whatever she’d mixed herself up in last night. That was bound to be hilarious. It was a little bit mean but it was so worth it.
“You’re not nice,” Vinyl groaned into the table in the kitchen later, still nursing the last of her hangover. The kitchen was well appointed but had an unlived in sense about it. As though it was setup to be used as a selling point for the house, or was owned and maintained by a particularly fastidious pony that refused to let anything change from when they moved in. The counters were free of the clutter that usually accumulated in kitchens and the dishes and pans Vinyl spied as Octavia moved around preparing breakfast appeared practically unused.
“What was that?” the gray mare asked, as she carefully tilted batter into a warmed pan.
Vinyl sat up and repeated herself, “You’re not nice.”
“Oh,” Octavia replied archly, “Is that so?”
“Yes, it is,” Vinyl huffed and went back to laying her head on the table with her forelegs wrapped around it, “What’d I ever do to you?”
“You made a popular revision of Paclopel’s Cannon in D, and didn’t change the cello part at all,” the grey mare growled in a low voice, as she used the balance and finesse given to earth ponies to twist the pan and flip the pancake in it.
Vinyl raised her head again, and flicked her ears. “What?”
“You sang the improper version of ‘Pa Clopped ‘is Cannon,’ and refused to hear of singing anything else at all,” Octavia lied easily, sliding a pancake onto a plate she’d laid out next to the stove and pouring another.
“Oh.” Vinyl laid her ears back and felt her cheeks burning. “Sorry, about that.” “Pa Clopped ‘is Cannon” was popularly known as either one of the subtlest and deep description of an old soldier’s life after the war, or was just the raunchiest and most innuendo laden songs in pony history. The difference was made fuzzier by the existence of two musical meters by which the song could be sung that each reinforced one of the opinions. Vinyl was of the opinion that it was one of the best pranks ever played on the musical world as a whole.
Octavia made an inscrutable noise and slid another pancake onto the plate she’d set out, taking the time to pour the next round of batter before bringing the plate to her guest. Vinyl put a hoof to her mouth to stop the drool that threatened to spill out as the plate was placed front of her before noticing a small slip of paper that had been placed down with the plate.
“What’s this,” she asked, sliding it over to read it before yelling in outrage, “You’re charging me for staying over?”
“Well, I was going to let you have off since I had a laugh at your expense,” Octavia explained, and Vinyl started to relax, “But then somepony reminded me that I am not nice. So I made up the bill for you.”
“You could have at least included the breakfast,” Vinyl complained looking at the paper again, “Why is it almost as expensive as the night’s stay?”
Octavia tossed her hair and gave Vinyl a proud look, “Eating my hoofmade food is a rare privilege. I thought I was being quite modest in pricing.”
Vinyl looked at the plate of pancakes in front of her warily before her stomach groaned a warning that if she didn’t feed it soon it would just eat her instead. “These better be the best pancakes I’ve ever had,” Vinyl capitulated, pulling the plate closer again. A moment later the small stack was completely hidden under generous heaps of blueberries, and whip cream. Octavia watched from the stove bemused as the unicorn carefully tried to navigate a bite to her mouth without getting and of the staining juice from the blueberries on her coat.
The careful bite was interrupted as a loud banging noise resounded from the short hallway to Octavia’s front door. Vinyl flinched, her magic fizzling dropping half the toppings on the bite straight down the front of her in a bright blue line.
“Open up!” a voice called from the same direction, “Don’t worry Vinyl we’re coming to save you!”
Vinyl and Octavia exchanged a glance and walked down the short hallway leading to the door where two ponies could be heard arguing outside the apartment.
“They’re not just going to let us in, we have to go and save her,” the voice of the pony that had yelled said.
“I’m telling you she probably just hooked up with whoever lived here and they just haven’t woken up to kick her out yet,” a voice more familiar to Vinyl answered back.
“You really think that Vinyl could hook up with a pony who lives in a nice place like this?” the other voiced asked, her voice dropping in pitch severely and sounding a dozen years older.
Vinyl sighed and nodded to Octavia, who had been giving her an uncertain look. “Maybe? I mean it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility,” the other argued back, sounding uncertain, “But you have to admit the odds that some crazy stalker pony that would want to keep Vinyl as some kind of deviant sex pet would live here are pretty bad too.”
Octavia stopped unlocking the door and turned to Vinyl with a devious smile. “I have just thought of another way you could pay off your debt,” she said in a voice too low to carry through the door. Her smile widened as Vinyl flushed with embarrassment. “We can discuss that later, however. It’s rude to keep company waiting,” she said, opening the door.
Outside a cream yellow earth pony and a light aquarmarine unicorn stopped arguing and turned to the door, hoping desperately that the ponies inside hadn’t heard them. Seeing Octavia the earth pony waved a hoof expansively at her and hissed a little more loudly than she probably intended as her voice suffered another strange change from old and grating to a young dulcet one that would be the envy of any choir, “You really think Vinyl could get with that?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence Bon Bon,” Vinyl deadpanned from behind Octavia. The yellow mare, Bon Bon apparently, finally noticed the white unicorn and looked embarrassed.
“Are… Are you Vinyl’s friends?” a soft voice asked hesitantly. Vinyl blinked and looked at Octavia with fear in her eyes.
“Um…” the two ponies both stalled as the gray mare at the door looked at them and then glanced away shyly, her head bowing down and away from them. They exchanged a glance and introduced themselves as Bon Bon and Lyra.
Octavia seemed to suddenly realize that they’d been standing at the door for some time and blushed harder, stepping away from the door threshold. “I’m sorry. W- would you like to come in?” she asked, her voice timid and insecure.
Vinyl was turning red as she watched Octavia reprise her act from earlier that morning. She opened her mouth to object to the farce but found herself choking at the sheer audacity of it. The two newcomers took her response as a sign that she was also embarrassed for her friend.
“No,” Lyra replied dully, still a bit stunned by drastic change in taste for one night stands. She shook and tried to recover from the blunt response. “I mean, no, we have an appointment. We were just supposed to meet Vinyl this morning and came to find her so she wouldn’t miss the train,” Lyra explained hastily, Bon Bon nodding quickly beside her.
Octavia nodded in return, a touch of disappointment in her eyes before turning to Vinyl. “She didn’t mention,” Octavia said, before starting and flailing her hooves in an apparent rush to defend Vinyl, “Not that she forgot it’s just we were so busy last night and this morning we had just started talking about last night and breakfast…” She stopped and covered the lower part of her face with her hooves and made a cute embarrassed noise. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Bon Bon nearly cried out glancing desperately at Lyra to help her console the embarrassed gray mare. Lyra missed the glance, having turned an accusing glare on Vinyl who worked her jaw impotently, still unable to form the words to defend herself from Octavia’s acting assault. “We’ll just go.” Lyra clamped her teeth down on Vinyl’s ear and dragged her out of the apartment, ignoring her cries as pain finally helped her find her voice.
Octavia nodded at them as they cleared her doorway. “That’s alright. Um, Vinyl?” Lyra stopped dragging Vinyl and they both looked at the gray mare. “Please, um, please come see me again?” she asked desperately. The three ponies stopped at that, Lyra and Bon Bon occasionally glancing between Octavia and Vinyl with confusion.
“Uh…” Vinyl choked, trying to figure out where she’d lost control of the situation, before replying with all the force of her intelligence at that moment, “huh?”
Octavia’s face lit up with a joyful smile that she appeared to try and rein in before giving up and just covering it with her hooves and blushing again. Lyra recovered first, renewing her attack on Vinyl’s ear and dragging her to the elevator. Bon Bon followed a moment later, pushing Vinyl from behind. Octavia watched them until they were in the elevator and waved goodbye. A satisfied smirk replaced her embarrassed facade as soon as the doors swished shut.
“Honestly, Vinyl, I can’t believe you. You knew you were supposed to meet us this morning and you still went out and picked up a one night stand,” Lyra graveled, from one side of Vinyl.
“I-“ Vinyl started to defend herself.
“What did you do to her anyway?” Bon Bon asked incredulously, flanking Vinyl from the other side, “She was positively smitten with you!”
“She doesn’t actually like me,” Vinyl told them in a low tone, “She just-“
“Vinyl,” Bon Bon interrupted, her voice shifting again to sound like a chain smoking Sapphire Shores, “You’re either the densest pony I’ve ever met or the most insensitive. That poor mare is obviously in deep for you.”
“But she isn’t actually like that,” Vinyl protested, “When we’re alone she’s-“
“I don’t think you should be telling us that, Vinyl, “Bon Bon chided.
“But-“
Far away the sound of the Ponyville clock tower rang out, drawing Lyra’s attention and making her interrupt Vinyl again. “Oh hay, the train leaves in an hour. Vinyl did you actually have something you wanted me to take with me to my meeting with my agent or not?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, it’s back at my place. We can go grab it and Bon Bon and I’ll help you with it on the train.”
“We can grab your shades while we’re there,” Bon Bon added, her voice becoming rugged and deep enough that it could barely be called feminine.
“My shades,” Vinyl said, screeching to a halt feeling her face as she recognized she was missing her favorite piece of apparel, “But I had them on last night… Oh that nag stole my shades!”
“Vinyl, we don’t have time for this,” Lyra told Vinyl, nudging her to get moving, “You have spares don’t you? We have to hoof it just to get to your place and back to the train station on time as is!”
Vinyl grumbled and stood, running after her friends as they plodded on ahead.
Octavia moved around her kitchen, cleaning up the remainder of the aborted breakfast. She stopped as she came to a pair of purple shades sitting on the table where she’d put them the previous night. Picking them up with one hoof she looked at them prospectively before holding them in front of her face and looking at the polished surface of her refrigerator.
“Not bad,” she said, putting the sunglasses down, “why don’t you just spend some time with me until your owner feels brave enough to come back and get you.”
She laughed to herself lightly as she, finished cleaning up before going about what promised to be a boring day compared to the morning she’d just had.
A/N: My first shot at publishing pony fiction. Lemme know what you think. I think it's going rather well myself.