“I…,” grumbled Octavia tiredly, peering over the rim of her mug of decaf - merely decaf! - coffee towards the still form of her peacefully-quiet marefriend. “Am off my medication, Vinyl. I can’t do this today.”
Vinyl contributed to the not-conversation by continuing to drool on the Canterlot Musicians Today! magazine. One cheek had already adhered to a glossy half-page spread highlighting the local jazz scene. Since neither mare particularly cared for jazz, Octavia silently wrote this off as no major loss.
“It’s like this,” she continued resolutely, taking another dreadful sip. “I went to the pharmacy to get my meds from Pill Bug, and do you know what they said? They said they were out, and that they wouldn’t have any more for-” Octavia gestured with the hoof not clutching the ceramic decaf-life-raft wildly, dramatically articulating the irritating truth of the supply chain issues.
Vinyl failed to comment.
Octavia huffed and swirled the remainder of her sanity idly. “Now,” she said as though the thought had just occurred to her and she hadn’t come up with it three separate times on the way back from the pharmacy. “If it were merely a few days, or even a week’s worth of delay, I wouldn’t have minded nearly so much. Simple mix-ups happen, as I’m certain you’re well-aware, and I am a patient mare.”
The corner of the jazz article fluttered in protest.
Octavia sniffed. “Very well, I am mostly a patient mare. But they said they had no estimate for when my medication would be back in stock, and I already feel as though I’m going to lose my mind, and it is but the first morning of my soon-to-be hellscape. Had I known there would be a shortage, I would have begun skipping doses. Every other day, so long as my doctor mostly approved.” She hummed into her drink and reconsidered. “Perhaps even if she hadn’t.”
She looked down, and her last remaining dregs of giving a damn rippled up at her. “I’m all out, Vinyl. I took my last pill yesterday. We both know what I’m like when the withdrawal kicks in, and every specialist I ask about it has no better advice than to tough it out, excepting those who feel the need to provide me brochures detailing addiction-recovery services.” She snorted towards the garbage bin, where a few such brochures lay contemplating their failures in life.
Vinyl’s nose whistled. It was almost melodic. Normally, Octavia would be able to focus on that, build it into something in her mind, but today… nothing. Only the feeling that she was missing something she’d normally be able to do echoed back to her.
“It isn’t fair,” she whispered into her decaf. “I’ll be able to drink proper coffee until they have more - which I will have to ask for every day, of course - but this isn’t how I wanted it to go. I can’t think without everything overlapping right now, like an orchestra where everypony is playing a different measure at once, but that’s not the worst part.”
Octavia stood, stretched out her aching legs, and dumped the rest of the pot into the sink. She then pulled the other bag of grounds, the one that was usually reserved for Vinyl’s late-night inspiration sessions, out from behind the coffee pot and set up as strong a brew as she felt she could tolerate.
Vinyl snuzzed away into the centerfold. The caffeinated and entirely wrong brew gurgled into existence, drip by unsteady drip. Octavia stared unblinking into the power light that heralded the arrival of caffeine. Too small a lighthouse to breach her mind’s fog for long, she knew, but there was no helping it.
“The worst part is,” she whispered into the filling pot. “It will only get worse from here, and there is nothing anypony can do. Not me, not you, not Pill Bug, not even Vinyl. It’s going to be rough for an indeterminate amount of time, and all I can do is haunt the pharmacy until I’m told otherwise.”
The birds sang outside, the sun continued to creep up the sides of the house, her marefriend crumpled the very concept of jazz against her soft muzzle, and Octavia wrapped herself in the superior scent of proper coffee. The inevitable would limp painfully past, however long it took. All Octavia had to do was weather the storm and see who broke first.
“KKHHHHRRRRKKKKK” said Vinyl, inhaling approximately five hundred words of revolutionary jazz techniques in one haphazard jolt of lucidity.
Octavia didn’t look up from the coffee pot. Drip by drip by drip. Which one would be the one to give her a moment’s peace from the cacophony of her mind?
“Whazzup,” Vinyl tried again, peeling herself from a glossy photograph of something remarkably saxopon-shaped. “You making more coffee? That’s…”
Octavia turned to watch Vinyl squint resolutely at the bag next to the coffee maker. A few seconds sashayed by, taking with them whatever Octavia had been thinking about a few moments before and leaving only the fact that they had been leading to a point, dammit.
“I dunno. Is that a new kind, or is it, uh.” Vinyl frowned at the page she’d glued herself to. “Jazz? Sleeping me has awful taste, filly. Is that the caffeinated stuff?” Then, softer, “You know you aren’t supposed ta-”
Octavia’s nose twitched. “Yes, I am aware. The pharmacy is out of my medication, and won’t have any more for the foreseeable future. Therefore, I may have as much proper coffee as I desire.”
Vinyl blinked at this new knowledge, and when it refused to blink back she shrugged tiredly. “Mkay. Anything I can do to help?”
Octavia sighed. “No. Thank you, though. I’ll simply be…”
The coffee pot blubbered to a stop. Both mares turned to stare at it, one off her meds, one never on them to begin with.
“Yeah,” said Vinyl into the silence of mid-morning, and reached for a mug of her own. “You will be. And I’ll be here with ya.”
There wasn’t much more Octavia could say to that, even if her mind did happen to function properly. She poured herself and Vinyl a mug of coffee, then leaned against the counter to take a sip. Burningly hot, despicably bitter, and overbrewed to the point of lethality. She took another sip, slower this time, ignoring the way the flavor and temperature bit at her taste buds.
“So,” Vinyl hummed, looking at anything but Octavia, but in the easy comfort of somepony who expected a lack of continuous eye contact. “Gimme a thought. Any of ‘em.”
Octavia forced her own horrible mugful of borrowed presence away from her muzzle. “I don’t know if I can manage with the withdrawal indefinitely, for even if that period should end eventually, it won’t ever feel like I’m nearing the end.”
Vinyl nodded. “Makes sense, filly. You’re real good at looking ahead, even when you don’t wanna. But hey,” She raised her mug, and Octavia, after taking a second to let her mind catch up to the present, followed suit. “You’ll make it through today, and today’s all you’ll ever have to worry about until today’s the day. Can ya do that for me, at least? Get through today?”
Something akin to a whimper escaped Octavia’s muzzle without her express permission. “Depends. Will you ask me again tomorrow?”
She looked up to find Vinyl smiling back, red eyes meeting Octavia’s violet ones for a precious moment before they darted away again. “As many tomorrows as it takes.”