"…and so I come downstairs and he's managed to set the whole friggin' terrarium on fire!" Mermista handed Glimmer what was definitely her last chocolate martini if she was going to sober up enough to drive home later. She resisted the urge to text Bow to see how he, Ari and the pets were doing without her. Not because she didn't think he could handle it, because he definitely could, but because this was her first time away from the baby and as good as it was to get out of the house for some adult conversation with her best buds, she was missing everyone back home like crazy.

"I'm sorry, but… how?" From the next to her on the sofa, Perfuma was laughing so hard tears were streaming down her face. She was on her third glass of wine and her face was already red and flushed.

"Because Sea Hawk is a goober and I can't leave him alone for a minute! Isn't that right, you maniac?" Mermista grabbed a cracker from the cheese platter they were all snacking from and put it between her teeth.

Her Scarlet Macaw, Sea Hawk, screamed, "ADVENTURE! ADVENTURE!"

He flew over from where he'd been watching their Girl's Night from one of the many perches Mermista had for him all over her living room. He landed on the back of the chair and snatched the cracker out of her mouth. Mermista grinned. "So I had to be like, sorry about your lizard, Lonnie. But at least I got out of pet sitting, like, forever."

She reached up and scratched Sea Hawk's head. The parrot cooed around a mouthful of cracker. Mermista took a sip of whatever tropical blue disaster with a sexual name she was drinking.

Perfuma wiped her eyes. "This just makes me so grateful that the worst Frosta ever does is chew through her enclosure if we're out too long! Oh! But she's started doing this thing, it's so cute. Give me a moment, Scorpia caught it on video, you have to see it!"

"Wait, did I miss something? Did Scorpia move in?" Glimmer felt like she'd been completely out of the loop since she disappeared into babyland."

"Not officially." Mermista waggled her eyebrows over her drink.

"Hush you. We're taking things slow!" Perfuma said without looking up from scrolling her phone.

"Yeah, soooo slow." Mermista turned to Glimmer. "Scorpia sleeps over, like, every night she doesn't have a security gig. She even helped rearrange stock in the flower shop the other day. They're already all domestic and shit. It's disgusting. Last time I was over, I heard her tell Frosta 'her other mommy' would be over soon."

"Wow," Glimmer said, hiding her grin with the glass. "Things must be getting really serious if she's ferret official."

"I truly dislike both of you." Perfuma said without bothering to look at either of her best friends, and Glimmer and Mermista laughed. This was fun. She'd missed this. They so rarely got to hang out like this anymore. "And intimacy is never disgusting, Mermista. Just because your complicated upbringing has taught you to keep your emotions at a distance—"

"Ughhh, I have notttt had enough alcohol for this." Mermista took a generous swallow of her drink. "Glimmer, you haven't been here and there has been no one to save me from Perfuma's drunken psycho-analysis."

"Sorry! I, uh… have baby pictures? If that would work as a distraction?" Glimmer waved her phone helpfully. She'd already shown them some, obviously, but she'd been trying to exercise self-control and had easily a dozen more she'd love to pass around. Give or take a hundred.

"Yeah, no, that's NOT going to help because she's on my case for not, like, settling down or whatever." Mermista rolled her eyes. Glimmer put her phone back down on her lap, reminding herself it wasn't personal even though, objectively, Ari was the cutest baby in the entire world and endlessly fascinating. "It's like when she started hot yoga. Now that she's in love, she's trying to get everyone into it. Let me slut around in peace, woman! Aren't you supposed to be into that hippie free love, shit?"

"You build walls around your emotions—"

"Perfuma's mad because I only allow myself to respect one man." Mermista made a kissy noise and Sea Hawk leaned forward and nipped at her lips like he was giving her a kiss. "Who's the prettiest girl in the world?"

The parrot threw his head back and trilled at the top of his lungs, "Mermistaaaaaaaa!"

"See? He's the ideal man. We're soulmates."

"You cannot be soulmates with a pyromaniac parrot!"

Glimmer just took a sip and enjoyed the show. She knew better than to get involved. Those two had been bickering like this since they were all teenagers in boarding school, complaining about their parents and bonding over the fact that apparently Rich Bitch was one of those titles that haunted your social life forever no matter what you did so they might as well team up. There'd been a couple of times she thought Mermista and Perfuma might actually get together, but apparently theirs was a friendship based on lovingly bullying each other.

"You're just lucky I value your friendship enough to put up with your constant negative energy." Perfuma's tone was very sanctimonious, but she grinned and Mermista snort laughed. The line between joking fighting and real fighting was really close with these two but apparently they could tell the difference.

"Whatever. You love me." Mermista had to be pouring her own drinks heavy because she was already slurring her words after two. "Unlike Glitter over here who only hangs out with us because we're the only friends she has left she hasn't slept with!"

"Excuse me!" Glimmer flushed, but she joined the others with laughing because, well, they weren't NOT right. "I am someone's mother. A little respect, please!"

"Hey! No!" Mermista shouted, snapping her fingers. It took Glimmer a minute to realize she was talking to Sea Hawk who'd flown into the kitchen while they were talking and was apparently trying to turn on the stove with his beak. He looked up at Mermista guiltily. "Don't do that."

Glimmer laughed. "I suppose I should be grateful that fire is not one of Catra's many vices."

"I had to put child safety covers on all the knobs after he almost burned the house down!" Mermista rolled her eyes. Sea Hawk flew to the half wall between the living room and kitchen. He shuffled from foot to foot, his head drooped. He finally peeked at Mermista from under a wing, abashed "Come on, stopppp looking at me like that. Ughhhh, fine. Here!"

She did something on her phone and the gas fireplace in the end of the room lit up.

"ADVENTURE! ADVENTURE!" Sea Hawk shrieked. He flew to a perch near the fire and stared at the fire, his beak agape.

"This is my life." Mermista said, shaking her head. But she smiled as she watched Sea Hawk sway back and forth in apparent rapture.

"Okay, wait, I finally found it!" Perfuma slid closer to show Glimmer her phone. "Watch this. Every time Frosta's out and someone comes to the door to deliver a package, she does this!"

On Perfuma's phone, her snow white ferret, Frosta, was standing on her back feet, her front paws leaning against the screen Glimmer recognized as the front window in Perfuma's apartment. She was watching something intently on the street below.

"What is it, Frosta? Is that the Prime guy?" said a voice Glimmer wasn't familiar with, but she assumed was Scorpia, Perfuma's girlfriend. Frosta's little back feet started moving around like she was squaring up. "Oh, yeah, it is him. You HATE that guy, right? What are you going to do, little buddy?"

Without warning, Frosta let out a horrifying screech of pure rage and started attacking the screen with her front paws. It looked like she was unleashing a volley of tiny punches and would have been terrifying if she wasn't a foot of snowy adorable fluff. The video shook as Scorpia laughed from behind the camera. "Yeah, that's it. Punch Prime, little buddy! Punch him!"

"She is so tiny and full of violence. I just love her so much." Perfuma was still laughing as she took her phone back. She closed the video and Glimmer got a glimpse of her background. A picture of Perfuma and a buff woman with an undercut that Glimmer recognized from Perfuma's tagged posts as Scorpia.

"Scorpia sounds really nice. I'm so happy for you two." Glimmer offered.

"I really do like her. A great deal." Perfuma shrugged and then giggled like she was twelve years old. Then she suddenly turned and gave Glimmer's arm a drunken slap. "Which is lucky for you, missy, since you stole my man!"

Mermista cackled so hard she snorted some of her drink back out her nose and had to go grab a tissue for clean up. Glimmer groaned. This was not her favorite running gag.

"I did not steal anybody!"

"I'm just saying, I put in the time! Every day! Every day exchanging hellos—very flirty hellos—"

"YOU were flirting! Bow was walking to work, politely minding his own business!" Glimmer was laughing, but it was at least half defensive. It didn't matter that Bow was her husband now, 100% hers without question, and she KNEW he'd never actually been into Perfuma. She still couldn't help but feel petty and jealous every time this came up. To be fair, Perfuma hadn't known her and Bow even knew each other back then, but it still felt like a betrayal that her best friend had been actively pursing with her future husband.

"I'd purposely wait to stock the outdoor displays until I knew he'd be walking by. Always did deliveries to his building personally. A whole year of working on that boy and for what?" Perfuma sighed dramatically, sinking back onto Mermista's couch. "One date! That's all I got! Then you swoop in and suddenly Mr. I'm not really interested in a relationship right now is MARRIED."

"Jeez, I can't BELIEVE you fucked up Perfuma's 300k slow burn flower shop AU with your boy next door, dog and cat meet-cute, Glimmer. Damn." Mermista was back with a fresh bowl of chips and her drink refilled. "You know Perfuma's type is anything with MUSCLES. What kind of friend are you?"

"A shitty one, I guess." Glimmer downed the last bit of her drink mostly to keep her mouth busy so she didn't say anything stupid. Her friends were just joking and maybe it was the postpartum hormones, but she really didn't have a sense of humor about this right now. As if summoned by her thoughts, her phone buzzed with a text from Bow and a picture of Ari with a sneaky expression on her face and what looked like a tupperware lid on her head.

Bow: you make this exact face

Glimmer: I do?

Bow: yes and I love it

Glimmer smiled, the feeling of missing home like a sudden ache.

Bow: having fun with the girls?

Glimmer: yeah

Glimmer: we're giving each other crap as usual

She thought about complaining about the Perfuma thing, but suddenly that seemed completely inconsequential. Besides, there was basically only one way to get Bow really mad, and that was if you hurt someone he cared about. She definitely wasn't annoyed enough at Perfuma to unleash that on her.

Bow: good!

Bow: we're fine here! take as much time as you need

Glimmer: OK

Glimmer: I'll be leaving in a bit anyway

Glimmer: I miss you guys too much

Bow: we miss you too

Bow: I love you

Bow: so much

Glimmer: I love you too

Glimmer sat smiling at her phone for a second, feeling warm and loved until something cold and wet smacked her in the cheek. It took her a moment to realize it was an olive from the tray of snacks in the middle of the table.

"Ughhh, stop sexting! No boys! This is supposed to be girls' night!" Mermista threw a second olive at her, but missed this time.

"I was not… He just send me a picture of the baby!" Glimmer held up the picture.

"Mmmhmm. Is that what they're calling it these days?" Perfuma deadpanned before collapsing onto Glimmer's shoulder in hysterics.

"Wow, you two are WAY drunker than I am." The bit of buzz she'd had earlier was pretty much gone. She rose to put her empty glass in the kitchen and grab a glass of water.

"I am not drunk!" Perfuma attempted a very solemn expression and failed miserably. "I am beverage enhanced!"

"And I'm not drunk. I'm PISSED." Mermista gestured with her drink and didn't seem to notice when she sloshed some onto her pant leg.

"Pfft. You're always pissed." Glimmer shot back.

Perfuma doubled over laughing. "She is! Negative energy!" was all she could get out between gasps.

Mermista gave Glimmer the finger and for a moment it felt exactly like it had back in school when the three of them would stay up all night and give each other crap about dates and school and everything.

"Ughhhh." Mermista groaned, leaning her head off the back of her chair. "I can't believe you're married to some guy and you have a baby. Like, what the actual fuck?"

Perfuma sat up, pointing towards Mermista in a vague way, like she wasn't entirely sure where she was. "Pardon me, but that kind of attitude is reductive and disrespectful, and Glimmer is no less bi than the rest of us because—"

"UGHHH, that's NOT what I meant." Mermista slumped even lower in her chair. "It's like, we're all old and boring now! It's like, fur, feathers, whatever, we're all just sitting around talking about our babies or settling down instead of partying or I don't knowwww. The us from ten years ago, if they saw us now, what would they say?"

For a long moment, the only sound the steady shush of the gas fireplace. Perfuma chewed a carrot thoughtfully, and Mermista swirled the blue liquid around in her glass, watching it. Glimmer finished her glass of water and stared at the collection of glasses next to the sink.

"Well, I think I know what at least one of us would say," Perfuma said at last. They both turned to her, waiting. Even drunk, Perfuma usually had something profound to say. "And that's, 'I can't believe I actually referred to a parrot as my fucking soulmate.'"

They all cracked up at that, even Mermista, who actually put down her drink so she could give Perfuma the finger with both hands. "Whatever. I hate you both so much. Yeah. That's it, actually. Me from ten years ago would be like, I cannot BELIEVE you still hang out with those annoying bitches."

"We love you too, Misty!" Perfuma said fondly.

"OK, but… for real?" Glimmer tried to stop laughing so she would at least sound serious. "I don't know about you guys, but, overall? I'm so much happier than I was ten years ago. Like, so much happier."

"Yeah." Mermista nodded. "Honestly, me too."

"It's like… everything's easier because we finally know who we are." Perfuma gestured randomly with a piece of raw broccoli. "And we're doing what we want instead of what we think we should be doing."

"Exactly!" Glimmer refilled her water glass and came back around to sit on the couch. "And if that's boring, or whatever, I think I'm fine with that."

"Well, fuck. To being old and boring, then I guess!" Mermista snatched her glass and raised it. "And, like, good friends. Or whatever."

They all toasted to that.

"Glimmer, do you need to head out soon?" Perfuma asked, finishing the wine bottle. "Scorpia's working a concert tonight, so I'm crashing here."

"Soon, but I can hang out for a little while longer."

"Great, because I found on a million pictures from school." Mermista hit something on her phone and the lights dimmed, the TV coming to life. "There's a whole sequence I call terrible haircuts Glimmer gave herself to piss off her mom."

"Oh, great," Glimmer said, settling back on the couch. She glanced at the time, trying to math out if she could still get back in time for bath and bedtime. This had been really nice, but she was looking forward to getting back to boring old home.

She looked at her teenage self on the screen, with a much fuller social life but weighed down by a million insecurities and doubts she hadn't had in years.

Yeah.

Much happier now.