All You Need Is Wub

“Octy, wait!” Vinyl desperately shouted. “Please don’t-“

The rest of her sentence was cut off by the door slamming in her face. “-leave me,” she miserably finished.

After being cut off in such a way by her possibly ex-marefriend, the only thing Vinyl Scratch could think to do was to sit rooted to her spot and stare at the door. It was like her brain had decided to shut off, causing all motor functions to cease and making her only thought ‘She’s actually gone.’

Vinyl sat there for what only felt like five minutes. The fact that she was actually in the same spot for the past hour meant nothing to her. In fact, nothing at all meant anything to her at that moment, because she had let the love of her life walk out the door without so much as a backwards glance. Eventually, though, even she could not deny the dryness in her throat and dejectedly trudged her way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As she slowly drained the glass, the usually carefree DJ gazed at everything in the kitchen, remembering all of the happy moments that took place in the room.

Over there was the oven, where Vinyl had almost burned the house down as a result of the first time she tried to cook something for Octavia.

Looking at the fridge, she remembered the day Octy had moved in, throwing out all of the junk food in there, proclaiming that “From now on, we will have plenty of fruits and vegetables in here, and no more of that awful food you were eating before.”

A glance at the table revealed all of the memories of the two mares just sitting there, talking for hours on end. It wasn’t usually about anything other than gossip around the town, but it was always one of the favorite parts of Vinyl’s day.

All of these memories proved to be too much for the depressed mare’s fragile mind, so she quickly made her way to the living room. This proved to be of little help, as Octavia’s recent departure forced her to quickly leave this room as well. Moving down the hallway in a daze, Vinyl eventually found herself in the bedroom. This was where she was hit with her final memory, one that almost brought her to her knees in grief.

There was the bed the two mares had been sharing for the past six months, where they had shared countless hours of pillow talk before falling asleep in each other’s arms, only to be greeted by the smiling face of their lover the next morning.

That was the straw the finally broke the camel’s back. Not caring about the now painful memories associated with it, Vinyl Scratch slowly climbed on top of the bed and cried.

Several days later, Rainbow Dash found herself in front of her friend’s door. Nopony had seen the charismatic DJ in several days, and she was starting to get worried. Having heard the basic story about the breakup from Rarity, it was clear that somepony needed to check on Vinyl Scratch. Taking a deep breath, Rainbow tapped the door a few times with her hoof while calling “Vinyl? You in there?”

Dash was greeted with silence. After waiting a few minutes to make sure Vinyl wasn’t just slow getting to the door, she got the spare key hidden under a fake rock, letting herself in. The first thing she noticed was the amount of empty bottles on the floor. Worried, Dash stepped further into the house, accidentally kicking one of the bottles, sending it clinking into another bottle further into the room. Making her way carefully around the bottles so she didn’t step on any, Rainbow Dash slowly checked each room of the house looking for a sign of her friend. The search yielded no results, and eventually she only had one room left to check; the bedroom.

Rainbow slowly peered around into the room, and saw a scene that she would likely never forget. Vinyl Scratch, the tough, happy-go-lucky DJ of Ponyville, was laying on the bed staring at the wall. Her mane and coat looked like they hadn’t been combed or even cleaned for several days, giving her the look of a pony who had nothing left to live for. In addition to this, the white unicorn’s eyes were as bloodshot as Dash had ever seen them, making her look like she had pink eyes with red irises. Vinyl turned her head as she noticed Rainbow Dash walk into the room.

“Hey Dash. How’s it hanging?” Vinyl hoarsely croaked out.

While clueless was a word that could usually be used to describe Rainbow Dash when it came to the emotions of other ponies, even she could pick up on the fact that her friend was in a tough place emotionally and decided to drop the bravado and cockiness that she usually employed when talking to other ponies, instead deciding to play the role of caring friend.

“I’m doing alright. I think I should be asking how you’re doing though. Rarity told me what she knew about the situation with you and Octavia, but it wasn’t very much.”

“What, me? Pfft, I’m perfectly fine, see?” Vinyl tried to flash her concerned friend a smile that was happy and carefree. Instead, it came out as a pained grimace, which Rainbow immediately caught.

“Really? It seems to me like you’re anything but fine,” Rainbow retorted. “By the way, what the hay was with all of the empty bottles out there Vinyl? I thought you gave up drinking so much.”

At that statement, Vinyl gave a morbid chuckle. “Yeah, that was pretty dumb of me. I thought I could drink so much I would stop thinking about her. Instead, all it gave me was a really bad hangover the next morning. I decided to give up on that plan shortly afterward.”

“Well, I’m glad you at least learned your lesson. I’m serious though, Vinyl. I’m worried about you. Can you please talk to me about what’s going on?”

“It’s stupid and mushy. You’d probably laugh at me for being uncool.”

Dash was hurt at this statement. “Vinyl, you know I wouldn’t do that,” she gently replied. “It’s obvious to me that you’re hurting, and I just want to help.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you. Me and Octavia have been dating for almost a year now. Well, I decided that, as a surprise to her, I was gonna learn how to play some songs for her on the cello for our anniversary. A few days ago, she walked in on me practicing. That probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing and managed to scratch up her cello pretty bad. That was when she flipped out and left.” Vinyl paused for a moment before shakily adding, “I just miss her so much.”

Rainbow Dash responded to Vinyl’s story by gently hugging the mare and letting her sob on her shoulder as the floodgates finally broke open. After several minutes, the DJ’s crying turned into quiet sniffles, and Rainbow spoke up after a minute.

“Look, Vinyl, I realize you miss her, but thinking about her constantly is tearing you apart. You need to get your mind off of her for a little while. In fact, you have a show booked tonight at Spiked Punch. I suggest you go and see if doing a show helps you out at all.”

“You’re right Dash. I completely forgot about the show. What time is it at?”

“I think it’s at seven.”

“OK, and it is…SWEET CELESTIA, IT’S SIX FOURTY-FIVE!”

“Ah horseapples, you’re gonna have to skip the shower then. I’ll go grab your records.”

As Rainbow was going to leave for where she knew Vinyl kept her records for her shows, the white DJ trotted over to the closet and threw it open.

“Forget about that Rainbow, I don’t need ‘em!”

“Really? Why’s that?”

Vinyl emerged from the closet with a box labeled ‘Vinyl and Octy’s Jams’. “Because,” she said, “I’m gonna try something new tonight.”