Summary: Sheena worries about her girlfriend and decides to go for a drive.
Chapter Twelve: What Makes You Think I'm So Special?
Sheena checked her phone for the umpteenth time.
Nothing.
Not one text, not a single, solitary missed call.
And that was completely unlike Pearl. It was also completely unlike Pearl to stand her up in the first place. Even when one of their 'missions' or something got in the way, Pearl always made a point of texting or even calling to say she'd be late, or could they please reschedule..?
Sheena worried at her lip, a bad habit she'd hoped, once upon a time, piercing it would cure (spoiler: it hadn't). Beach City wasn't too far from here. And, okay, so maybe she'd never actually been to Pearl's place before, but it was supposed to be near some giant old statue on the beach, under the lighthouse, so not exactly hard to find. The only question was: how would the other alien space rocks take her trespassing? It wasn't like she could call ahead and ask if she could come by— if she had a number for any of them, she'd have called already. But Pearl tended to talk about Garnet, Amethyst, and Steven in glowing terms, so they couldn't be all that bad, could they? Seemed unlikely they'd mind. Even if it felt a bit like Pearl was still reluctant to let her meet them.
What if something had happened? Those 'missions', the whole 'fighting our monstrous, corrupted former allies' thing seemed pretty dangerous; a couple of times Pearl had actually turned up to a date bearing an assortment of scrapes and scratches. They always faded quickly, almost right before Sheena's eyes, and Pearl assured her that gems didn't even bleed in the same way humans—
Ok, fine. That was it. She was going to go. Even if the weather was shitty. Even if she was probably just overreacting. She could worry about her reception on the way over.
Her keys were in the kitchen, her wallet was in her jacket and her helmet was right by the door, where she'd left it. Even with a double-back to grab her phone charger and a power bank, and then the inevitable struggle back into her cold weather gear, she made it out the door in under five minutes. She bumped it shut with her hip and heard the click of the lock and started down the dim hall, tugging on one of her gloves with her teeth, as best she could with her helmet tucked under that arm. She hit the dark landing in the middle of checking the weather and traffic along the route to Beach City, and then damn near tripped over some idiot who thought it'd be a great idea to sit on the top step, looking down.
It was, of course, not an idiot, but Pearl herself, knees drawn up tight beneath her chin.
Relief came first, in an exhalation that took the tension coiled tight in her chest away with it. Anger, though, came hot on its heels. How long had Pearl been sitting here? Sitting right here while Sheena worried and wondered what to do? Wondered what had made Pearl miss their date, worried that she, Sheena, had done something wrong, or that something had happened to Pearl or that, hell, maybe even that the 'possible' apocalypse Pearl mentioned had become a certain one?
Anger was just as quickly replaced by a fresh burst of concern, though, when Pearl turned enough to look up at her.
She looked like hell. Hell on a bad day. Her usually immaculate hair was windswept and dotted with melting ice crystals, her 'clothes' and skin soaked through and dripping. Her nose dripped, too. And even in the poor light, Sheena could see that her big blue eyes were watery and red-rimmed.
Standing there, in the near dark, the building creaking around them in the wind, Sheena wondered, not for the first time, who had made the gems, and why they'd made them so human in so many ways. You could make a case for bipedality, bilateral symmetry and all that, but why did a hard-light hologram need hair? Why an opposable thumb with one joint, why four fingers per hand and not six or two or ten? Why fingernails, and eyelashes, and eyebrows? Why did gems cry, or get snotty noses, or blush in unspeakably adorable ways? And why - why - give something the ability to not only think but feel if you were just going to treat it like an object, or a toy?
Sheena sighed, pocketed her phone and held out her hand. Pearl took it, with some hesitation, and allowed herself to be helped to her feet. She always seemed to 'run' at just a few degrees above the ambient temperature, which Sheena supposed made sense for a space-faring race, but tonight her delicate fingers were like icicles in Sheena's bare hand. Not quite burningly cold, but close.
It didn't take much effort to coax Pearl inside after that, and the offer of a towel while Sheena de-wintered was all it took for her to start drying off and stop dripping on the kitchen floor. Pearl even put the kettle on, grabbing a coffee mug from the cupboard and, after a brief hesitation, a teacup. The apartment was soon filled with the smell of jasmine, and Sheena's hands with a steaming mug of inky black with one sugar, just the way she liked it.
A bit late in the day for coffee, maybe - Pearl had some trouble with human ideas about time - but then Sheena was a fairly hardened and hard-wired java junkie and doubted it'd keep her awake. She took it without comment, and, when Pearl seemed on the verge of opting for 'standing in the kitchen and staring down into her teacup' as her activity for the rest of the night, took her skinny arm too, gently towing her over to the couch. Pearl sat when Sheena did, never really averting her gaze from the teacup, clasped tightly in both hands.
Now what? Wait it out? Sometimes the best thing you could meet silence with was silence. Give whoever it was time to either get their thoughts together and relax, or get anxious enough about the silence itself to break it.
...of course, most of the people who'd put Sheena on the spot like this before were friends, or friends of friends, or one very human ex-girlfriend. This, however, was the current girlfriend, and also a several thousand year-old alien warrior who could be, quite literally, patient as a stone.
Sheena got through half of her mug and was actively battling the urge to check her phone before she gave in.
"Did you walk here?" she asked.
Nod.
"All the way from Beach City?"
Nod.
"That's a hell of a way to walk. Even if you do have 'stamina far superior to a 'mere' human being'."
The daintiest of shrugs was all she got in response to the slight goad and her deliberately bad attempt at mimicry, and Sheena frowned.
"I'm not mad about the movie, if that's what you're worried about. Things come up sometimes. I'm just glad you're safe."
Silence.
Sheena rolled her eyes and put her mug down on the coffee table.
"Look, you know, we could sit here and play twenty questions all night," she said, letting some of her frustration come through. "Or - here's a thought - you could just tell me what the hell's bothering you enough to come all the way over here and then just sit on the stairs in the dark instead of knocking on my door. Or returning my calls."
Pearl flushed guiltily, and finally raised her head.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do. And then, when I got here, I—"
She ran a hand through her hair, and somehow only succeeded in making it more ruffled. Without the stabilisation of a second hand, the teacup held in the other began to shake, threatening to spill its untouched contents. Pearl gingerly lowered it down onto the table beside Sheena's, eyes following it all the way. And then Pearl kind of shut down again, staring at, or maybe through the table in the kind of screaming silence that left Sheena clenching her jaw with the effort of not breaking it first and in frustration.
Patience had never been her greatest virtue.
"It all came rushing back," Peal said so abruptly that Sheena actually started. Pearl didn't seem to notice, continuing on more slowly, almost wonderingly. "Almost like nothing has changed. But it has changed! I know it has! And even if it wasn't that, it's the worst possible timing. Why now? Why not before? Earlier? Before I—" Her hand fisted, and she hit her own thigh in apparent frustration. "And I know it's probably terrible of me to just come running here, and I know that it makes me a complete hypocrite because this is exactly the kind of thing I'm angry at her for doing in the first place, but then I thought it's probably even more terrible for me to just— just ignore you, and to not let you know what's happening, and then—"
Well, that all made zero sense.
"Whoa, okay, Pearl, it's okay," Sheena soothed. "But you need to back it up a bit. What happened?"
Pearl looked up at her with wild, almost frightened eyes.
"Rose. Rose is back."
Sheena blinked.
Well.
That was unexpected.
"Rose? As in—"
"Yes. Rose Quartz."
"Oh," she said.
Sheena blinked again. Then sat back hard against the couch. The remnants of her frustration fled so quickly it almost felt like her chest had been hollowed out.
Rose Quartz was back?
But that didn't make any sense. Hadn't Pearl said she'd died when having Steven? Or, not died, exactly, but, somehow become Steven? In a way that meant she wasn't here anymore?
Honestly, the way Pearl had explained it, even the second time, the whole thing hadn't made a lot of sense.
"I thought you said she was dead..?" Sheena hazarded.
"She is dead. Well, not exactly. She gave up her physical form in order to have Steven, but—" Pearl stumbled to a halt. "Steven is still here. But so is she. I— I don't entirely understand it myself, I've always hated dealing with temporal paradoxes, the math is so convoluted, but it's her. Steven is still here, but it's her. I'd know her anywhere. Anywhere."
Well.
What did you say to that? What could you say to that? The news that your girlfriend's for-all-intents-and-purposes-dead ex was no longer dead, or even just resting? Some lame quip about zombies, or vampires, or other undead? That maybe Rose had just been 'pining for the stars'? Would Pearl even get the reference? Probably not?!
In the end she went with: "Wow. Heavy," and inwardly cringed.
"I don't think you quite understand. This shouldn't be possible!"
Sheena considered this, and then further considered the fact she was was dating an alien who proved that law about advanced technology being magic on a damn near daily basis. 'Impossible' was a word rapidly receding from her vocabulary. Hell, Pearl had literally just implied that her species had time travel technology and Sheena hadn't even batted an eyelid.
"Yeah, well, aliens made out of light shouldn't be possible, but here we are."
"Yes. Yes. Yes, here we are!"
Pearl began to laugh.
It started slowly, hesitant at first, but built into that particular type of hysterical giggle that straddles the uncomfortable boundary between comedy, tragedy, and lunacy. Sheena wasn't at all surprised when the laughter dissolved into sobs that Pearl attempted to muffle with her hand, slim shoulders curled in and shaking.
But when Sheena went to pull her into a hug - and maybe gems did it of their own accord naturally, or maybe it was something they'd picked up from humanity, but Pearl really seemed to embrace embracing - Pearl shied away.
Oh.
Of course.
Rose was back. Rose Quartz, leader of the Crystal Gems. Rebel general and all-round badass-slash-hero-slash-genius who, if Pearl was to be believed, was so good and nice that she cried literal healing tears. And compared to all of that, there was her, Sheena, part-time punk rocker, full-time broke PhD student and, lately, rebound girl for a love affair that had lasted longer than most human civilisations.
Rebound girls were temporary. Rebound girls were replaceable. And rebound girls, in her own, rather personal experience, had a particularly high chance of being thrown over the moment the old, original flame expressed any renewed interest.
Sheena found herself looking down at her lukewarm cup of coffee and wishing it had something stronger than caffeine in it. She looked up again at a light touch on her arm: Pearl, face tear-streaked but concerned.
"I'm sorry," Pearl said. "This is... This is not how I wanted this to go. At all. I didn't want to have to—" She sighed, her free hand fluttering vaguely through the air. "I wanted to handle this better."
Sheena's heart sank a bit further.
Damn.
And, of course, it had to be just when she'd started to think that they actually had something together. Something that might carry them past the day when that first mutual spark of curiosity and attraction and the whole enormous rush of 'I'm dating a literal alien' wasn't enough anymore. Something that might last longer than a few months.
At least she could go down gracefully. Take it like a woman.
"It's okay," Sheena said, trying her damndest to keep her voice level. "This sort of thing's always... rough. I appreciate you coming to tell me in person though."
Pearl blinked at her in apparent confusion.
"How else would I..?"
"I've been dumped by text message before," Sheena admitted. "For future reference, I don't recommend doing that."
"'Dumped'?" Pearl frowned and blinked again, this time in that way that usually meant she was trying to work out some unfamiliar (usually human) concept or idiom. Then her eyes widened in apparent understanding. "Oh. Oh! You think that I'm... ending our relationship..?"
"Well, yeah. Aren't you?"
"No..?"
It was Sheena's turn to blink, something painfully and rather embarrassingly like hope flooding through her.
"No..?"
"No!" Pearl looked offended by the very suggestion. She grabbed at Sheena's closest hand and took it between both of hers. "I wanted to apologize for missing the film," she said earnestly. "And for not calling you back. And to explain. And then I thought we should… talk. About what you wanted to do. About us. And, um, Rose. Because—"
She stopped abruptly and swallowed hard, squeezing Sheena's hands between her own. She looked way too much like she was about to start crying again.
"—because it's not fair of me to assume what you'd want," Pearl finished in a whisper.
Sheena closed her eyes for a second to try to think. A long, deep breath helped a bit. So, Pearl didn't want to just end things. That was a good start. But Rose Quartz being back had a high chance of dragging things even deeper into 'its complicated' territory, something Sheena had honestly thought was not actually possible.
"Okay. Okay. Well. I guess that depends on what's going on, exactly." She wet her suddenly dry lips. "Are you, you know, going to get back? With her?"
"I don't know." Pearl bit her lip. "Part of me wants to, but... another part of me doesn't. I think. I do know that I don't want to go through it all again. The… others. Waiting for a repeat, and knowing that I was second best. Knowing—" She stopped, paused, seemed to draw back from some precarious mental ledge. "Knowing all of that, I'm not even sure that I could do it again, even if I was willing to. It's been… difficult." She sighed, and looked up to meet Sheena's eyes. "It was always difficult, truth be told. She was right when she said we'd never had it easy."
The little laugh Pearl gave at the end of that was both sad and fond, and, to Sheena's ears, pretty telling.
"You still love her though, right?"
She tried not to make it sound like an accusation. Pearl seemed to take it as one anyway, kind of folding over into herself to take up even less space than she usually did.
"Yes," she admitted in a very small voice. "I… don't think it's something I can... stop."
"Well, then, I guess it seems pretty clear—"
"But I love you too!"
That brought Sheena up short. Way short. The kind of short that stopped your heart and blanked your brain and sent chills racing up and down your spine. The good kind.
"Oh," she said dumbly. "Well. That's..."
Everything she knew about Pearl so far told Sheena that, despite her 'flair for the dramatic', Pearl wouldn't make that particular declaration lightly. She'd mean it. It'd come from the heart. Or... 'stone', which seemed to be the equivalent saying. Serious, in any language. As in the five-thousand-year-romance kind of serious.
Oh. Wow.
She liked Pearl. She liked Pearl a lot. How could anyone not? Pearl was brilliantly smart, quirky as hell, by turns bashful and blasé and not exactly hard on the eyes either. But did Sheena love her?
The sick, gut-wrench feeling at the prospect of being dumped suggested that there was something more than just 'like' there.
Oh, shit.
How was she going to explain this to her parents? 'Mom, Dad, remember when I told you I met someone, and that she was a bit older? Well, when I said 'a bit' I meant 'a lot'. And also she's an alien from outer space who once saved our planet and our species and I'm trying to show my appreciation for that one on a very personal level.'
"-and I don't think I'm like her. Rose. I'm not— I can't be with someone and be with someone else too and just… assume that everything will be fine."
That'd be a problem for another day. In the meantime, it sounded like Sheena was missing some vital exposition. 'Be with someone and be with someone else too'? 'Assuming everything'll be fine'? And that earlier moment of backing away from the mental ledge - about repeats and being second best. Hmm.
"That's what Rose did?" she asked. "With you and Greg? Assumed everything would be okay?"
Pearl nodded.
"And Avinash, and Isabella, and Karatina, and Hye-Jin, and the hundred or so others before them."
Rose Quartz: serial humanizer. That was an unexpected bit of tarnish on her glowing reputation.
"That's... not cool."
"No, it's not 'cool'!" Pearl snapped, anger flaring and dying like a supernova. "That's what we fought about today. Or, rather, I shouted at her about it. I always used to tell myself that she'd come back to me in the end. But this time she didn't. Well, she did, I suppose, just now, but..."
"I get what you mean," Sheena answered her mute appeal. "What did she say?"
"I always thought I'd made it abundantly clear how I felt, but apparently this was not the case. She said she'd had no idea!" she huffed, and Sheena concluded that Rose Quartz, rebel general and serial humanizer, was also either blind or a bad liar given that Pearl wore her figurative heart on her sleeve. "She even offered to talk to Greg about it, but I said that wouldn't be fair to him. It would just make him feel bad, and it's not his fault." She paused. "Well. Not really." Another pause. "Certainly not entirely—"
"I'm guessing she never asked you about it then, huh?"
"She asked me if I'd still love her. How could I say no to that?" Pearl sighed, and the flash of anger was gone again. "And, well, she may have asked once. The very first time. But how could I say no?" Another sigh, almost leaden with heaviness. "Anyway, it's all right there in the manifesto. Love isn't something you can control. You love who you love."
A manifesto? Of course they had a manifesto. Every good rebellion needed a manifesto, and Pearl, Sheena had learnt, was nothing if not a perfectionist. Sheena had never heard of one that focused on love, except in certain terrible corners of the internet where 'love' was a word often used incorrectly. Fifty bucks said that the Gem's manifesto was beautifully carved in stone somewhere, with lots of frilly little delicate flower decorations and the galaxy's most ornate border. Probably even one of those big illuminated letter things.
"But at the same time, I did risk everything - everything! - for us," Pearl continued softly, more talking to herself than Sheena. "That was in there too. My life, my mind, my freedom, any chance I ever had of going back to space. I had nothing left to risk by the end. I never understood what else I had to do after that. Was I supposed to keep fighting, somehow?"
As heavy as this conversation was already, Sheena wasn't sure she wanted to delve any deeper down the rabbit hole tonight. That twist in particular sounded like something at least one of them would need to be in a better place, emotionally, to explore. Talking about the Gem War and her homeworld generally got Pearl upset, and from what they'd already gotten through together, Sheena couldn't blame her. The Diamond-whatsit sounded like a pretty horrible place.
"Pearl."
"Was I supposed to fight them? That's in the manifesto too. But it always made her so upset when I merely said I disliked them that it couldn't possibly be that—"
"Pearl-!"
This time Sheena complemented the word with a touch to Pearl's shoulder, and she seemed to come back to herself.
"Oh. Sorry. Sorry." Pearl's eyes flitted down to the hand on her shoulder. After a brief moment of hesitation, she covered it with one of her own, thankfully much warmer than it had been at the start of the night. "But, well, all of that's why, with you, I wanted to see what you wanted before anything else. It's... important to me."
What Sheena wanted. That was question for the ages. And one where the wrong answer, or the right one phrased wrong, would probably mean she wouldn't get it.
So, break it down.
She wanted Pearl. Again, the gut-punch prospect of dumping made that one pretty obvious. She wanted Pearl in all of the ways that she could have her, and even some of the ways in which she couldn't. Not for the first time, she shook her mental fist at Kansas. The movies had lied, and her hot alien girlfriend didn't have the biology for sex, let alone much interest in having it. At least she wasn't one hundred percent grossed out by the idea, or always averse to lending a helping hand when things got a bit more heated than intended on Sheena's end. And, man, she had great hands—
Whoa there, girl, getting sidetracked.
So, a big, emphatic 'yes' to wanting Pearl. But did that mean she wanted Pearl all to herself? Could she deal with Pearl wanting someone else? If that someone was Rose Quartz?
That really depended on just who Rose Quartz was, didn't it? Aforementioned badass healer-slash-hero-slash-genius, if Pearl's stories were to be believed, kind to animals and small children, and generally the best thing before and since sliced bread. But Sheena was also rapidly getting the impression of someone who was, at best, a seriously shitty communicator and oblivious trampler of hearts and, at worst…
Well, in Sheena's world there was a big difference between 'oblivious' and 'uncaring'. There was an even bigger divide between 'oblivious' and 'willfully cruel'.
Oblivious, she could forgive. She had to hope Rose was just oblivious. It was possible. Everything Pearl had ever said about her people added up to a species with zero EQ. Apparently they hadn't even known what love was, until Pearl and Rose had fallen headlong into it and found themselves making things up as they went along. Sheena could imagine just how easy it'd be to fuck things up if you had no good examples of romance or relationships to work from, especially with their planet's whole gross caste system thrown into the mix.
Besides, it just seemed so... incongruous that someone could meet Pearl and get to know her and see her smile, hear her laugh, watch her eyes light up and hands wave all over the place when she got really into a topic, and not care if they hurt her.
Oh man, she really did have it bad.
So, with all that, what did she want?
"Well… I really like you," smooth, Sheena, smooth, keep on talking like you're in kindergarten, the ladies love it, "and I still want to, uh, be with you. But I know that Rose means a lot to you, too. And, look, I'm kind of a newcomer on the scene, and, you know, if you're not sure what you want with her, I think I can still be with you while you work that out. Longer-term? I dunno. I guess that'd depend on if you, um, loved us both. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it, especially if whatshisname, Greg, is still in the mix. I mean, I don't have anything against polyamory, I've just never done it before, and I'd definitely want to actually get to know her first, so—"
"Polyamory?"
"You know, when more than two people are in a relationship together."
"'Poly' meaning 'many' or 'several'. 'Amor' for love. Of course. And of course you humans have a word for it. You have words for everything."
"It's called 'language', Pearl," Sheena deadpanned. "I thought you guys had that one too. Or is it just interplanetary flight, and teleportation, and holography and, oh, I think time travel was the new one for today. The report to my government handlers this week is going to be an interesting one."
Pearl rolled her eyes at what had become something of an in-joke between them, but smiled for the first time all night. Sheena would count that as a win.
"Clearly I've said too much. Just trust me when I say that generally the best way to deal with temporal paradoxes is to ignore them." Her smile fell. "Would that we could in this case. Though now that I think of it, I'm not certain she's come back or forward as much as..." she trailed off.
"As much as..?"
"I don't know. She's clearly modified the Hourglass of Time," Pearl said, the capitals neatly slotting into place as she spoke the words. "But how did she get it in the first place? Steven destroyed it on one of his first missions, and it wouldn't have reformed-" Pearl frowned thoughtfully, then shook her head. "I think we're getting away from the topic at hand."
"Me and you," Sheena said. "You and Rose. Not together, but, I guess, kind of you seeing both of us concurrently. Or… one of us not at all."
Pearl nodded, that frown returning.
"Honestly… I think it could be either," she said, and sighed, heavily. "I don't know what I want with regards to Rose anymore. I thought I did, but—" she ran her hand through her hair, another one of those oddly human nervous gestures. "But regardless of that, you told me not that long ago that I shouldn't do something just because you wanted it or enjoyed it. The same applies to you. Don't… Don't offer, ah, 'concurrency' if it's not actually what you want. What you want is important to me."
"I know," Sheena said, capturing her hand, slightly cool and slightly oddly-proportioned, in her own. "But thank you for saying so too. So, I'm gonna tell you what you told me then: I'm willing to give it a try and see how it goes. And if it's not working for me, I'll let you know, and then we'll re-evaluate, just like we did then too. Ok?"
"Ok," Pearl said and nodded, serious as a heart-attack.
"Ok," Sheena affirmed. "And, if we're re-evaluating stuff, do you still want me to come over next week?"
Pearl looked blank for a moment, then her eyes widened with surprise and remembrance. They'd set the date a month ago. Sheena had actually been really looking forward to it. See the Temple for herself. Poke around some alien tech. Meet the other alien space rocks. The doted-upon Steven.
Rose Quartz had not figured in her plans. To be fair, it didn't seem like she'd figured in Pearl's, either.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! With everything that's been going on the past few days I'd completely forgotten!"
"That's cool. We can reschedule when things have calmed down a bit. Or if things are going to be too weird, you know, have me and the undead ex there at the same time?" Sheena blinked, her ears registering the words her mouth had just delivered. "Oh, shit, sorry, that came out wrong."
Pearl looked at her with confusion.
"I'm sorry. I have no idea why you're apologizing..?"
"I think I just called your - called Rose Quartz a zombie. Hasn't been hungering for human brains or anything since she got back, has she?"
Recognition visibly dawned.
"Oh, no, no. No. Mind you, there isn't exactly a surfeit of human brains around the Temple at the best of times."
It wasn't like it was even a particularly funny line of conversation, but Sheena found herself succumbing to giggles.
"What about blood? Pretty sure vampires qualify as undead."
Pearl rolled her eyes extravagantly.
"Oh, honestly, is that one still kicking around? You regenerate in one coffin, in one crypt, one time and suddenly you're the centre of an entire mythos."
And there went Pearl, casually dropping another minor bombshell into Sheena's life.
"You're kidding me, right?"
Pearl just smiled sheepishly and shrugged.
"Capes were fashionable at the time."
"Of course. You in a cape with that skin tone- Oh, man, and you never drink," Sheena paused meaningfully, and nearly lost the battle with her giggles again, "…wine."
"What does wine have to do with anything?"
"You know," and there, the battle was lost again, giggles spilling out of her, "I've always wanted to be a creature of the night. Should I start leaving the windows unbarred?"
"Now you're just being silly," Pearl said, an unmistakable mix of exasperation and fondness in her tone.
"Yeah, well," Sheena said, sobering up a bit, "still want me to come over, Vlad? Or should we reschedule?"
Pearl paused to think for a second, then she nodded, chin set stubbornly.
"Yes. Come over, I mean. If you're willing. I'm not going to just rearrange my life at the drop of the proverbial hat."
"Yeah. What the hell. Let's do it. Besides, you've kinda got to expect capital D Drama when meeting the family for the first time. Especially if your girlfriend is Dracula."
Pearl groaned.
"And I thought it was bad when Amethyst found out."
"Never let you un-live it down, huh?"
"No." Pearl rolled her eyes. "Just when I thought she'd finally forgotten about it, that horrible novel came out. I'm told there are movies now."
"Just a couple." Sheena felt a yawn coming on and decided not to fight it. The blinking time on her DVD player read 20:42, which meant the actual time was closer to midnight. One of the drawbacks of dating immortal, indefatigable aliens: they kept obscene hours. "I probably should get to bed. But I could queue up a couple of the less-bad ones for you if, you want to, y'know, stay here and let things settle back home. They've usually got period costumes, and I'll bet they're all really," she paused for dramatic affect, "inaccurate."
The look of mild irritation Pearl gave her this time suggested she was probably approaching done with teasing for the night, but it faded quickly. Sheena didn't miss the way that her eyes flicked over to the DVD player, and then to Sheena's pile of hastily-shed cold-weather gear.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't think about the time. You should get to bed. You humans need your sleep."
"Us humans need our sleep," Sheena echoed.
"Though I would like to, um, stay here. If that's alright. And let things 'settle'." Pearl's eyes dropped to her lap where her hands sat, fidgeting with each other anxiously. Then she sighed, shoulders drooping and, for the first time in Sheena's experience of her, actually looked tired. "I don't think I could handle facing Rose again right now. Or Garnet. Or any of the others."
"Sure. Did you want me to queue up some Interflix for you?"
"No, thank you. But could I, ah—" Pearl bit her lip, her cheeks going that adorable shade of fluster-blue. "May I, um, stay? With you?"
'Stay' had become a kind of a codeword between them. Most of the time, if Pearl stayed over for the night, she'd spend it in the kitchen or lounge, watching whatever entertainment Sheena queued up for her (and, despite Sheena's increasingly half-hearted and slightly guilty protests, cleaning or fixing things. Her apartment had never been so spotless). 'Stay', though, meant Pearl staying over the night, in Sheena's bed, cuddling.
"Sure."
Sheena took a bit more time than usual with her nightly routine of teeth brushing, face-washing, toilet-using,and piercing removal/care. It'd be cold enough overnight to merit PJ's, she decided, and stripped off in favour of light sweats and the overlarge and ancient Anthropology Minors: Bleed the Fourth World Tour shirt that served as her winter set. The quilt - and presumably Pearl - would take care of the rest.
Pearl was sitting on the end of her bed when she entered the room, head cocked to one side as she idly thumbed through a copy of the IAMEE Propulsion, Power & Rocketry journal. She looked up and smiled, vacating her seat to allow Sheena to slip under the covers, watching her as she settled and tried to get comfortable. Which would probably be easier, Sheena privately admitted, if Pearl wasn't watching her.
When she was suitably settled, Sheena patted the spot beside her in an invitation Pearl was quick to accept. She burrowed beneath the covers, not so much snuggling up to Sheena as moulding herself to her body, a slender leg over one of hers, chest flush against Sheena's side, head pillowed on her shoulder. Her hand came to rest in the centre of Sheena's chest, over her heart.
Appearance-wise, Pearl usually put Sheena in mind of a bird: hollow-boned, bright-eyed, and sleekly aerodynamic. Behaviour-wise, though, Pearl seemed a lot more like the more tolerable kind of cat. Tactile. That was the word. Always touching, reaching for Sheena's hand or arm or waist when they were out and about, snuggling against her side or chest when they were somewhere more private. They couldn't even watch TV on the couch without Pearl ending up in her lap three-quarters of the time.
Not that Sheena minded that. Not one bit.
Snuggling in bed couldn't help but make things different. Context, was what it was. And not just in the awareness that there were activities other than sleeping that they could be engaging in, but that it was primarily a place for sleeping and Pearl simply did not sleep. She'd stayed over like this maybe half a dozen times so far, and the knowledge that she was there, awake all night, watching, waiting, did something to Sheena's primitive lizard brain and wired her to be awake too. Every time but the last she'd tossed and turned the entire night. And the last time she wasn't sure if she slept because she'd managed to take her psych friend's advice to reframe it, in her head, from being watched to being guarded, or because she'd just been absolutely, totally exhausted.
Pearl settled against her quickly, a light, warm weight. Sheena yawned and felt blindly for the light, plunging the room into darkness. Or near to it.
"Pearl?"
"Mm?"
"Nightlite."
"Oh. Sorry."
The light winked out. Sheena closed her eyes, settled a bit more, and tried to allow her mind to drift...
Some unknown time later, she woke with a start, blinking against the light and the sudden dread of oversleeping. The color of the light was wrong for morning, though. Or even for her overhead lights. Blue.
Sleep-addled, it took her longer than it ought to have located the source of the disturbance: Pearl, still curled up fast against her with, to Sheena's astonishment, every indication of being fast asleep. Except for her gem, which blazed.
Sheena turned her head to the side to follow the lines of blue light, and watched the vague shapes resolve themselves into a objects, people - strange looking people, probably more gems - and was that… Rose Quartz? It fit the description. And… that had to be Garnet..?
Pearl had said that she could sleep, just that she didn't like to. And as the scene firmed up, as Pearl's gem began to emit, not just light, but sound - shouts, screams, the clash of metal on metal - Sheena had a sudden insight as in to why that was.
"Oh boy."
