Octavia hesitated after she entered the hallway leading to Vinyl’s studio. It wasn’t that the prospect of dealing with Vinyl gave her pause these days; in fact, she had walked straight in many times over the last week or so. It was more that the sight of Oliver leaning against the wall with a bored, somewhat exasperated look on his face was unusual enough to give her pause. On top of that, Octavia was also bothered by the heated shouting from inside.
Before the whole Resonance debacle, if she had entered this hallway and heard muffled yells emanating from the studio, no extra thought would have been given to it. That seemed like quite some time ago, though, and Vinyl had appeared to be actually trying to honor her promise to be a better boss. After their initial awkward session, they seemed to have figured out a more natural state of affairs. Vinyl was still herself, in that she would clearly get irritated, but she had learned how to keep silent more often. She still let a few things slip through, but she appeared to be trying and that was what was important. Octavia had even noticed several times that Vinyl had very nearly yelled before she stopped herself.
The last week had almost been what Octavia would consider fun. Almost… Vinyl was still clearly having too much fun trying to tease Octavia, but she had gotten comfortable enough around the unicorn to toss back a few quips. Over the last couple of days, Octavia would say that she was actually winning the sarcasm war; there were more instances in which she left Vinyl speechless than the other way around.
Octavia was mostly having a hard time coming to grips with the heated shouting from inside. Part of her really wanted to believe that Vinyl had meant what she said about trying to be a better boss. Yet, here Octavia was, listening to Vinyl shouting back and forth with some nameless pony. This was enough for her to cast a curious glance towards the nonchalant Oliver. When he gave no response, she quickly darted her attention back to the door and then to Oliver again with a confused expression.
Oliver, on the other hoof, appeared to be taking this as a completely normal occurrence and was behaving as if he was merely waiting for it to be over. Octavia opened and closed her mouth a few times as the words of several questions seemed to form and then rapidly dissolve before she could vocalize them. Just as she was becoming aware of how the shouting was stirring up shades of frustration and anger inside of her, Oliver interrupted by standing up straight and looking directly at her.
“Hey, Tavi. You probably want to stay out here for a bit. I’m not entirely sure what you did to make her so angry during that one session last week, but that’s nothing compared to what will happen if you go in right now,” he stated and then started to inspect one of his hooves closely.
“What do you mean she was angry last week? Sure, it started out a little weird, but since then we’ve been getting on quite fine…” Octavia questioned in a slow, deliberate tone as she ran through the sessions from their previous week and considered Vinyl’s behavior during their awkward session.
“What, you couldn’t tell? She was pissed,” he replied as he quirked an eyebrow and glanced back towards her.
“Exactly when are we talking about again?” Octavia asked with a stumped look on her face.
“It was the day after your huge argument, when you came back in to do a recording session. You couldn’t tell how angry she was?” Oliver asked with a shocked look on his face.
“No, she was actually being quite polite. I don’t believe I’ve seen her act so nicely before.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t find that strange? She spent a solid two hours stomping around the studio after you left, grumbling under her breath the entire time. My point is, you don’t want to go in there right now, trust me,” Oliver reiterated and then glanced over towards the clock with a bored look on his face.
“I will admit it was… unusual, but excuse me for a moment when I ask: what in the name of Celestia is going on right now?”
“Don’t worry about it, Tavi. This is what you’d call a-“ Oliver started to answer but was interrupted by the loud echoing slam of the door being kicked open by a brown unicorn stallion. He was still turned inwards and yelling at the top of his lungs.
“Oh Yeah? Try and stop me from coming back! You still owe me, and I’m not giving up until you pay me my due, one way or another!” he screamed, only to have Vinyl’s voice come yelling back immediately.
“I already paid you every bit that you’re ever going to see, you scum-sucking sleazebag! Now get out of my building!”
Octavia stared at the spectacle for a moment. She was forced to jump aside when the stallion kicked the door shut and stormed right past her. She stared after him for a moment before she returned her gaze to Oliver, only to see him still casually leaning against the wall. In fact, he lifted his other hoof and stared at it closely. Right as she set her jaw and made up her mind to march inside to find out what the hell was going on, she was cut off by Oliver interposing himself between her and the door.
“Seriously, Tavi, that’s a really bad idea. Give her some time to cool down,” he asserted and held up a hoof to interrupt her scathing reply. “I don’t know why you’re so determined to think the worst of Vinyl, but this isn’t really what it looks like.”
“Care to explain? Because, this just looks like Vinyl acting the same way she always did. Even after swearing up and down she was going to change and putting on a huge act about it, she’s still here screaming at ponies.”
“I’ve heard enough of Vinyl’s angry grumblings to figure out the story between you two. This little incident has nothing to do with the way she treats her employees, Tavi. The stallion you just saw used to work for her, but now he comes in regularly insisting that she didn’t pay him enough. Before you can start, she paid him exactly what he was promised. He was somewhat well known for a little while, but then fell out of popular regard when he drank away all of his bits and wound up in the tabloids,” Oliver explained while Octavia blankly stared at the doorway.
“After he apparently ran out of job prospects, he started randomly appearing here and claiming that Vinyl ripped him off. Vinyl has turned him away every time, and from what I’ve heard he’s done this to pretty much everypony that ever hired him. Most of them wound up calling the guards to get him to stop, but with Vinyl, they just get into screaming matches. I was worried at first, but he always storms out saying he’ll return and Vinyl always shouts back something along the lines of what you just heard. Every once in a while she threatens to call the guards but never does. The two constants are that whenever it happens she’s in a sour mood for a while, and that he’ll show up in a few weeks to try and get money again.”
“Why doesn’t she call the guards on him?” Octavia questioned after a long moment of staring at the doorway.
“No idea. All I know is that she gets super upset over everything afterwards, and she never mentions the fact that I ‘disappear’ for a little while to let her cool down. You should probably do the same. I wanted to catch you before you went inside, so don’t say I didn’t warn you when you inevitably ignore me,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone and then walked over to the elevator.
The ding of the elevator doors snapped Octavia back to full attention. She blinked several times and set her shoulders squarely towards the doorway. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Oliver; it was more that she couldn’t believe it was so cut and dry. There had to be more to the story. Vinyl would have surely done something about it by now. If this was such a recurring problem, there had to be a reason why she was just letting it slide. Octavia kept replaying the stallion’s last statement in her mind, focusing in on the not-very-thinly-veiled threat at the end of his tirade. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. Her expression slowly turned into a glare and she confidently stepped through the doorway.
“Oh Celestia damn it! I don’t need you yelling at me too, Tavi! Yes, I yelled at him, but he bucking deserved it, so don’t even start!” Vinyl yelled the instant she caught a glimpse of Octavia stepping through the doorway with a displeased look on her face.
Octavia winced when Vinyl stormed into the recording room and slammed the door shut behind her. Octavia blinked a few times, put her instrument down next to the couch, and made up her mind to follow. It didn’t take long to find that the doorway to the recording room was shut fast.
“Vinyl?” Octavia asked as she knocked on the door. “Vinyl, let me in!”
“I told you to go away!” came a muffled reply.
“Actually, no you didn’t… That’s not the point, though. Just let me in; I’m not going to yell at you,” Octavia stated calmly and tried the door again.
She waited a long moment, but it soon became clear that the silence wasn’t going to be broken from inside, nor was the door going to be opened for her. She looked down the hallway pensively and saw another doorway that she had never had reason to go through before. She walked up to the door and swung it open easily. She was rewarded with a view of the recording room and was able to see Vinyl through the glass. Vinyl was sitting hunched in a corner of the white room, and she had wedged a chair against the door. Octavia met Vinyl’s gaze and the unicorn’s eyes suddenly opened wide as she saw Octavia on the other side of the barrier. Octavia reached out for the pair of headphones on the console just in time to hear Vinyl yell at her.
“Hey! Don’t touch any of that! Just go away. There I said it. Are you happy? Now just leave me alone…”
“I told you that I’m not going to yell at you,” Octavia replied. However, the confused expression on Vinyl’s face reminded her that the unicorn always pressed something on the console while talking to her.
A quick glance across the console wasn’t enough to easily discern which button was the one she needed. The console had a myriad of buttons, dials, and sliders. Only some of them were clearly labeled, others had labels that were Griffin to her, while others had no markings at all. She leaned closer to study the console, ignoring the occasional childish yell from Vinyl and eventually narrowed her choices down to two buttons. She looked at the two and compared their locations on the board in an attempt to reason it out.
One was a bright red button, about half the size of her hoof, located near the volume panel. It was rather simple to reason that this was most likely the record button. The other was a larger blue button that was down near the bottom right and away from any of the dials and sliders. The choice was rather obvious now that she analyzed it, but the yelling from Vinyl was enough to remind her that she didn’t know what any of this actually does. She sucked in a deep breath and pressed her hoof against the blue button.
“Vinyl? Can you hear me? I told you that I am not going to yell at you. Why didn’t you let me in?” Octavia calmly questioned and then carefully studied Vinyl’s reaction.
“I don’t care! You’re going to try and lecture me, or something, about how I’m not being a good boss, and I don’t want to hear it!” Vinyl yelled back and turned away from Octavia. Vinyl shifted in place and appeared to be attempting to curl up in the corner so she could cover her ears.
“All I want to do is ask you a question, Vinyl…” Octavia replied, barely remembering to press her hoof against the button this time.
Octavia sighed and pulled a stool over from the corner so that she could sit down in front of the console. She gave Vinyl a little while longer to respond as it appeared that Vinyl was at least struggling with an inner debate about answering. Vinyl occasionally lifted her head up as if she was going to say something, but she would tuck it back down at the last moment.
“Listen, Oliver told me what that was all about. I’m not going to get angry at you for yelling at him. I just want to know why you don’t call the guards on him. You realize that he just threatened you, right?” Octavia questioned after a minute or two of watching Vinyl.
“It’s not worth bothering them over something silly like that… It’s just a work related conflict; they have better things to be dealing with…” Vinyl mumbled so quietly in response that Octavia could barely make it out.
“You hardly even sound like you believe that yourself, Vinyl. Tell me, how exactly is it work related when he doesn’t work for you and is barging into your workplace to threaten you after a long shouting match?”
Vinyl finally pulled her head up enough to turn around and stare at Octavia for a moment. The silence between them stretched into a gulf, but then Vinyl got up to her hooves and marched towards the doorway. In one clean motion she pulled the chair free and opened the door. She quickly strode outside the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Octavia winced at the loud noise coming through the headphones. She took them off only to hear Vinyl’s not-so-quiet hoofsteps pass directly by the doorway instead of coming inside.
A curious expression flashed across Octavia’s face as she got off the stool and carefully placed the headphones back on the panel. She poked her head out the doorway just in time to see Vinyl retreat into another doorway down the hall and slam it shut behind her. Octavia stared at the unfamiliar door for a moment. She had no idea where the door led to, but she strode up to it and pounded on it with a hoof.
“Vinyl, come out here! You can’t just run away from your problems and expect them to go away! So, why don’t you just tell me what's really going on already?” Octavia demanded through the doorway.
“Oh, that’s rich, Octavia. You of all ponies are telling me that I can’t just run away from my problems? Why don’t you take your own damned advice before you try giving it out?” Vinyl responded harshly.
“What in the name of Celestia is that supposed to mean, Scratch?” Octavia yelled back as she leaned on the door with her hooves so she could press her face right up against the wood.
Octavia stumbled backwards as the door was suddenly pushed open. She stepped back with a hopeful expression on her face. Vinyl thrust her face out through the crack in the door just long enough for Octavia to see the angry snarl and the hints of wiped tears on either side of the unicorn’s face. Octavia started to say something, but was interrupted as Vinyl yelled over her.
“You want me not to run away from my problems? You’re the one leading Resonance on and pretending that you don’t know what you’re doing! You want to give me life lectures? Okay, fix your own damned problems first! NOW GO AWAY, OCTAVIA!” Vinyl concluded as she thrust her face out even further towards Octavia. It then disappeared with the loudest slam Octavia had heard yet.
“Is that what you honestly bel-“ Octavia started to yell back with an angry scowl, but was cut off by loud blasting music from inside.
“This isn’t over yet, Scratch!” Octavia attempted to yell over the music before storming out of the studio.
Octavia sat on her couch clutching a cup of cheap tea in her hooves as she tried to force herself to forget about the incident with Vinyl earlier in the day. She was not having much success in that venture, as she kept inevitably replaying the events in her head. The curiosity of what the hell Vinyl was trying to hide kept mixing with the remnants of anger over the way she had behaved. The end result was causing Octavia to get stir crazy. This was already the third time she’d tried to just sit still and sip the tea in an attempt to relax. It was taking all of her concentration to avoid just getting back up and pacing around the crummy apartment to relieve her annoyance.
Octavia took in a long slow breath through her nose, smelling the cheap rose scent of the tea. She calmed down just enough to raise the cup to her lips and take a small sip, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. She paused with the cup halfway back to the coffee-table and turned to look at the door. The knock repeated after a moment, and it struck Octavia as a rather odd knock. It was firm, but not the kind of pounding she would have expected from Vinyl. It didn’t even occur to her that it could be somepony else, as nopony would have a reason to come to her apartment this late.
Octavia glanced back to her rapidly cooling tea and took another sip before she set it back on the saucer and walked towards the door. She gathered her emotions and pulled the door open only to be greeted by the exact face she expected to see. Though, the apologetic look on Vinyl’s face wasn’t quite what she had expected. She stared at Vinyl for a long moment, who still had her hoof halfway through another knocking motion. They stared at each other awkwardly for a while before Vinyl decided to let her hoof fall back to the floor.
“So, are we planning on saying anything, Scratch? If you just wanted to play the staring game, then I’m sure it could have waited until tomorrow,” Octavia said with a slight smirk to break through the silence.
“W-well, I came to apologize for earlier, Tavi,” Vinyl finally managed to respond.
“You don’t need to apologize, Vinyl,” Octavia said with a roll of her eyes before turning away so she could retreat to the couch to finish her tea. She had to hold back a small chuckle when Vinyl, once again, cringed at the smell of the apartment.
“Yes I do, Tavi. I was over the line earlier, and I wanted to say sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things…”
“Are you going to tell me why you didn’t call the guards on him, Scratch? I’m not too concerned over what you said since you were obviously distraught. I still want to know why you would willingly let him keep harassing you, though,” Octavia prodded while she finished her tea.
“I already told you about that, Tavi. There are things that you don’t know about me. I’d rather not go over them right now, okay?”
“How long are you going to keep using that excuse, Vinyl? Are you ever going to talk about it, or are you going to just keep saying that there are things I don’t know about you?” Octavia questioned with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ll tell you soon, Tavi… Just not now, it’s not something I like to relive.”
“Fair enough, Vinyl,” Octavia replied with a shake of her head and a sigh. “How did you know about the thing with Resonance, anyway?”
“Oh, that? She never stops talking about you whenever I go to visit her. She bombards me with questions about you all the time too. It’s pretty obvious that she’s smitten with you. Even though I meant to talk to you about it, I shouldn’t have said it the way that I did. You really do need to do something about that, by the way, Tavi. I’m not sure if your daily visits are the best idea or not,” Vinyl said as she shifted awkwardly from hoof to hoof just inside the doorway, glancing around the room to avoid Octavia’s glance.
“You could sit down you know. There’s this nice couch here, I won’t bite, and I’m pretty sure the couch won’t swallow you either,” Octavia said with a smirk. “I was already aware, though. I just didn’t know that it was quite that bad.”
“Well, I guess it’s my turn to ask you why you haven’t done anything about it then, huh?” Vinyl responded with a slight grin as she stared at the couch for a moment, and then sat herself down next to Octavia with a shrug. Vinyl let out a squeak of surprise as she sank further into the collapsed cushion than she had expected, which elicited a small fit of giggles from Octavia.
“You alright there, Vinyl? Silly me, I thought you could handle sitting on a couch. Let me know if you need some help next time,” Octavia said with a grin. She managed to silence the giggles but shook lightly in place for a few moments.
“Har har, laugh it up Octobutt,” Vinyl replied with her own grin at the way Octavia’s face fell in response to the nickname.
“I thought we talked about that, Scratch…” Octavia said icily.
“Hey, can’t take what you dish out? Just a little bit of harmless teasing, Tavi,” Vinyl responded as her grin widened. “You didn’t answer the question, though. Why haven’t you done anything about Resonance yet? You really shouldn’t lead her on.”
“I just haven’t been able to figure out the best way to approach it, Vinyl. I’m afraid that suddenly ceasing to visit her will only make things worse as well,” Octavia admitted with a long sigh. “It’s not a situation I’m overly pleased with, but I’m afraid that if I just try to back off she’ll take it the wrong way. So, I’ve been continuing to visit, as I am concerned over her health, but have been trying to keep them rather short.”
“Well, let me know if you want any help with it, okay?” Vinyl said as she reached out and playfully punched Octavia’s shoulder. “So, are we cool?”
“Yes, Vinyl, we are ‘cool.’ I told you that you didn’t even need to apologize in the first place.”
“Nah, I wanted to. I guess I’ll see you at the studio tomorrow? Figure something out with Resonance, or else I might start pitching ideas at you,” Vinyl said with a mischievous grin that clearly stated Octavia wanted nothing to do with them.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Vinyl,” Octavia said with the slightest of shivers as she shook her head yet again. Yet, she couldn’t stop the smile that slowly spread across her face afterwards.
“Say hi to Resonance for me!” Vinyl called out as she disappeared through the doorway and shut it with a laugh.
“Oh, just get out of here Scratch!” Octavia yelled back through the quiet laugh that escaped her lips.