Holy freakin sh*t Vale wrote something!1 Holy crap! it's been 84 years...

Yah, sorry for being dead. College is murder. College is death. College is seeing your art improve in 6 months like crazy.

Anyway here's a pearlmethyst. Yes the title is a callback to We Need to Talk (the episode)

"So what's it like, huh?"

Pearl tilts her head slightly to one side. It's a matter of less than ten degrees of inclination. "What is what like?"

Amethyst shrugs, but she doesn't lose her grip on the slender waist and the music behind is still playing, a soft tune Pearl never expected to find in the wide array of records sprinkled everywhere among the piles of her room in diverse states of deterioration.

She expected her even less to have an actual pile just made of music and it almost came as a shock when she actually found gramophone records in it and even more of a shock when she found out Amethyst had a gramophone in perfect state, just begging to have some of it all played— Really, when did she become so exquisite? She wasn't like that.

Now is not the time to mull over it.

"Did you hear me?" the raspy voice repeats.

"No," Pearl accepts, and a vague tint of teal makes itself present on her cheekbones. Gods, she's so sharp all over.

Amethyst rolls her eyes and it seems like she expected not to be heard. "I asked, what's it like to be in love."

And again that pretty little head of hers is askew, her face riddled with confusion and Amethyst wants to snicker because, as well, the teal tint in her face has grown a little darker. "Why do you ask this here? Now? With me?"

"I barely love anything, let alone anyone," the short one answers, and a lopsided smirk forces itself on her lips. "Except food. Ain't ever gonna hate that."

It is Pearl's turn to roll her eyes now. Amethyst's own dart down ocassionally, making sure her boots don't step and dirty up Pearl's pretty little aquamarine flats. Such big feet, elongated like all the rest of her. She's a living, walking stick. "And why ask me of all people? Don't you know love?" for a second, those slender fingers, so peacefully seated in the shorter gem's back, grip. "Don't you love Steven?"

The other retorts, "Love is not in love. Two different things. Two different words." She blows a loose strand of lilac hair out of her face, trying so hard to appear nonchalant. "And I ask you because of Rose. You were in love with Rose, right?"

The soft music is still soothing the chilly atmosphere of her room, but Amethyst percieves the muscles of the pastel gem tense, undulate under the palm of her hand anyway. It's a weird sensation, pleasant but distressing.

Why now? Pearl thinks. Why after the Sardonyx fiasco? Why when they were all on their own on the temple, why when Garnet hated her, why when all she had to sate her anguish was the little boy, and he couldn't even begin to understand?

"It could be said so," she mumbles, and she can't bring her sight down to meet those dark eyes that are staring at her so intently. "Why are you doing this to me?"

She tries so hard to keep the whine off the question. It still wheezes through and Amethyst's eyes are now lidded, and they are still staring and they still have that weird glow they have had since they found her when she was a gemling and when she was about to fall dormant in Pearl's supple thighs and that she only has with her, because Pearl knows the glow with Garnet, the glow with Rose, even the glow with the boy; none of those are like this glow and she hadn't seen it in so long and it stirs something in her, something warm and maternal and tender,

"I just wanna know." The glow is still there, in fact, it's there even harder. "Just tell me how it is."

Pearl sighs. This is unavoidable, isn't it?

It is, in fact, she could just storm out of the room, give closure to this dancing session that started out of nowhere because she was so lonely and silent and astray that she needed someone, anyone to give her direction and Amethyst was the only one there, at home, and she'd never trust a human—

Her pale fingers drift to meet with Amethyst's warm hand and she gently twirls her the way she would when the runt was just a gemling. "Well, for starters," she begins, and she finds her mouth dry. She fights a chuckle. "It's awful."

Amethyst isn't as subtle. She laughs. Her hair spins gracefully, following the direction of her movements like a silk cascade, even if it's wild and tangled and filthy and it just begs for the regular manteinance Pearl used to concede it with special passion back in the day. "You tell that to me? Now?" she asks playfully.

When they are face to face again, a plump hand squeezes on a slender one, and the short one's voice transforms into something that's almost seductive. "Why is it so bad?"

It's like she broke a dam built around Pearl's lips. The pastel gem guides her around and they waltz on the clearing. The crystals on the far walls reflect light and give those dark pools a really unusual sparkle. "Well, I can't really describe it, but it's just torture. But it is also a torture you need. Every time I was close to Rose I felt like it was never close enough. I always wanted to feel as much of her as I could." She's grimacing now, but even as it happens, her grace and the fluidity of her movements remain intact, and she's still as much of a master at guiding the small one around as she was twenty years ago or so. "It is a very strange need, that of seeing her at all times and always making sure she was alright. If she suffered, I suffered. It was just a constant ride of pain."

No matter how hard Amethyst fights her bangs, they still end up getting on her face. Like right now. Pearl wants to flick them away. "I don't get it, then."

"I guess I might be exaggerating. Or censoring the story somehow. Cropping the picture." The purple one is smiling. Pearl has this habit of saying something simple in this flowery way, like she's always on a stage. No doubt Sardonyx is such a performer.

The pastel gem licks her lips. Another twirl. "It is also very beautiful," she admits, such pain laced in such a simple statement. Amethyst is all ears. "It makes you feel complete. Or… Well, there really isn't any suitable comparison. Whoever the subject of your affection is, they bring you so much joy… It feels like you can do anything and everything for them. Even things like changing habits that are deep-seated into you."

Amethyst smirks, but it also doesn't escape Pearl that there is pain in her words, as well. "Even things like following them into Hell itself?"

Her first compulsion is to squawk Language!. But right now, there is no Steven.

"Yes, Amethyst. Even things like that."

She's looking down now, and she refuses to follow the steps, even if the music is still there, the rhythm, the compulsion to sway to it.

"Is something the matter?"

Pearl already knows the answer but she wants to hear it. She wants to go back to the time when, if the small one was hurt, she'd just scuttle next to her and cry it off while the taller one petted her short mane.

"Nah," is what comes out. Her eyes are still lidded and still glowing and the crystals in the room still envelop its owner in a dreamlike haze.

"I apologize for the crude explanation," Pearl finishes. "I don't know very well how to put it into words. It's quite complicated, even for a… smart bird such as myself." She rolls her eyes, recalling one of the many nicknames the shorter one has pinned on her through the years. "I still don't understand why you wanted to hear this though."

"I guess I was just wondering if I felt this for someone," the short one accepted, defeated, and her fingers curl around the slender hand on her grip. She only had the gut to do so while her mane was well layered over her face, though. Such lack of confidence.

She'd not have it until the day Rose toured her through the Kindergarten. By that time, Pearl had already taught her to speak, to walk like a gem, to eat in a relatively —emphasis on relatively—orderly manner, she was even in training to summon her weapon and fight with it like a proper Crystal Gem.

They'd returned and Pearl had seen Amethyst's eyes veiled in darkness, like they'd lost something.

Whatever that was, they never recovered it. Pearl had always seen that darkness present since then.

But now is no time to reminisce. The gramophone stops abruptly, and the static is now echoing on the wide walls of the room, making the atmosphere oddly ominous. Pale hands have now landed on tubby shoulders. "Amethyst, you think you're in love with someone?"

Why didn't you tell me then? She feels betrayed. They'd been confident for millenia. Amethyst would always trust her with her little secrets as a gemling, childish secrets like a cool secret hideout near the temple or a hidden stash of fruit stolen from the crops of a human. To think she didn't feel her deserving of her secrets anymore…

"It's no big deal," the small one answers, shrugging in Pearl's hands. Everything is so cold now, compared to the warmth of the previous dance. "I think it all fits well, but it doesn't matter either way. They wouldn't care."

Pearl gulps. How dare she put herself down like this?

Deep down, under all the layers of mess and food and general ickyness, she still finds her charming. If it happened to be a human, she'd never doubt Amethyst's capability of landing a score.

"May I know at least who this is all about? I understand, trust me. I know all of the pains of love… And also know the worst one is the one of loving the unattainable." She's running those bony fingers through the lenght of her shoulders now, trying her best to act reassuring. It's been a rough time for all of them.

Amethyst is ready to yell, no you may not, and run away, go hide in the curtains of her hair until the water has settled and she's ready to face her again and pretend nothing is wrong because yes, of fucking course she knows what it feels like to be in love, and she wonders if Pearl understands that all those woes she lands on her, dotted with remarks of how she doesn't understand, are the exact same via crucis she endures on a daily basis.

Instead, she just turns, biting down tears, but they turn out to be impossible to contain, and her vision is blurry when her eyes meet Pearl's again, a spiel on the puppy-crush-transformed-into-deep-love already cooked in her throat and ready to deliver—Gods, she's been ready to say it so many times, even if she knows she can't.

And Pearl understands. It feels akin to a kick to the stomach delivered by one of the stronger, more muscular gems she damn well fought in the war. She doesn't need to breathe, but the air is still sucked right out of her as the mysterious glow in those eyes becomes so crystal clear, so telling—

"Oh no," she whispers, and her fingers clench like talons around the soft flesh of Amethyst's shoulders. "Oh, no, Amethyst. No, no no no no…"

And, for the first time in what must have been a decade, she curses, a hand now dramatically placed over her lips. "Shit…"

Words begin to scramble around on her mouth. Her brain struggles to ensemble an answer to that, to that abrupt, silent, hard confession she's just had delivered straight into her face. Amethyst, I love you, but I don't… You know I really appreciate your company; but Rose… We can still have an intimate friendship—

Had the gramophone not been still spinning, filling the corners of the room with its broken static, the silence would have been enough to snap her spine in half.

But, for some reason, the smaller gem hasn't run away.

They stay there, revelling in the shock, for what feels like hours. Amethyst almost sees a stopwatch directly over Pearl's head, counting down the time before she turns around, coldly, and never flings a word her way again. For five thousand years. At the very least.

So, she thinks, it doesn't really matter what she says anymore. "She would've wanted you to move on."

And those blue eyes widen as saucers. Who would you be to understand what she would have wanted or not…

She's so sure nobody knows Rose the way she does.

But then again, she's also sure nobody knows her the way Amethyst does.

"I… I don't know."

"I know that I know nothing."

Pearl is taken off guard, but she laughs at the Socratic quote. Where does she even store that? Since when does Amethyst know or care about philosophy? Is it a memory from the times Pearl would read those parchments, rapt in human society, while she was sitting in her lap?

"You've grown so smart."

"You haven't checked on how smart I am in like twelve years." There's a hint of pain there.

"Twelve years is only a speck in the lives of people like us."

"Not for Earthlings."

"Not for Greg?"

"Not for him, either. And not for me."

"You're not from Earth."

"This is where I was born. I'm from Earth, will always be from Earth."

"You're an alien."

"Never been to space, though…"

And the pastel gem giggles, unsure of what to think, what to feel, what to do with this information. She'd been so blunt all this time…

This revelation paints her in a new light. It's the very first time Pearl sees Amethyst as anything different than the runt they saved from the Kindergarten. It's the first time she sees those glossy lips up close, full and inviting. The first time she sees her curves with appeal more than complete disinterest. The first time she actually focuses on her eyes, the way they glow. On the soft cascade of her hair…

She's bloomed into something beautiful, Pearl realizes. A strong warrior, skilled if reckless. She's grown so much, nothing like the gemling she raised…

Yes. Maybe Rose would have wanted her to move on.

Maybe Rose knew.

She doesn't have much more time to mull on it, for Amethyst has fallen to her impulse and pulled her into a hungry kiss, one that, to her, is a seal of the very first and very last time Pearl would display such kind of affection.

And, to the surprise of both, Pearl returns it avidly, biting on those full lips with her own, sucking on her lower one with hunger, with need, and she pulls both of them closer, running her hands through that silky wild mane, enjoying the raw heat that radiates from the Earth gem, a sensation only Ruby can mimic, and even in her case it's artificial; just a side effect of being a Fire elemental, and nowhere as natural, as organic as it feels with her.

They lose themselves into the kiss. Time passes slowly, yet it's not awkward at all; everything feels so clear, so right. Pearl has pressed her thumb into the amethyst embedded in her partner's chest, and she gently caresses the rims and facets, finding it oddly pleasant—both in an ethereal and a physical sense— when the small one shudders in her grip, sucking in air through her nose, gasping into the kiss. Shivers ripple through her own physical form as plump, soft fingers also massage the gemstone in her forehead.

Amethyst has hit it big. She moans slightly in the deep display of affection, sure she might as well be satisfied, and exhausted, for days after this. She doesn't know what it means. It might as well be the servant programming of Pearl gems pushing this particular one forward to obey to her physical stimuli. The thought makes her stomach drop.

Then again, wasn't Pearl a defect gem? Didn't she fight this programming? Wasn't it the very reason Rose had to shelter her, because otherwise, she would just be culled and eliminated?

Then, what does it mean? Why is she so dumb with this?

She senses the other's tongue push against her lips, and the thoughts dissolve in less than a second— less than a fraction of a second. She lets her in eagerly, the tips of both tongues brush tentatively; and then Pearl begins snaking in and eating her mouth out all over—

Gods, here it comes. Her gem glows and warms under those expert fingers and she perceives her own mass phasing into her, deforming, ready, eager to mesh, to fuse into one. She needs Opal. It's been forever since she's needed to fuse so freaking bad.

But Pearl's physical form rejects her.

She whines in pain as Pearl's soft hands push her back and as her physical form returns to the default, the sensation akin to a human being refused intimacy after intense arousal.

"Why did you do that?!" she shrieked in frustration. "We were gonna fuse! The good way too!"

Pearl can see the pain in those eyes, but she still shakes her head—"Not now, Amethyst. Not after what happened with Sardonyx. I'm afraid something bad will happen again."

Amethyst squeezes her eyes shut, the last drops of the urge to have her close, as close as possible, fading. "It's okay. I get it."

Another of those lopsided smiles. "We can cuddle or something."

Pearl's face flushes teal. "I think we can quit dancing for today." She fears after this any stimuli will bring Opal forth. "That sounds just about fine."

"Wanna see one of Steven's samurai movies and whine with me about how all the moves are wrong?" She's obviously being snarky, but a moment of peace after such intensity does sound appealing to Pearl.

"That sounds fine," she coyly replies.

Amethyst holds her hand, unsure yet if this means anything, if anything is going to change between them from now on.

She begins walking, her gem glowing for a second as she summons the temple gate.

Pearl thinks of reminding her the gramophone is still running for a split second, but chooses against it. She doesn't need the nagging right now.

"Amethyst?" she calls, and said gem turns around, staring at her questioningly.

"Yeah?"

"Give me… Give me some time, will you?"

And something explodes inside the smaller gem, something warm that radiates from the core of her gemstone and ripples until it reaches the tips of her fingers, her toes, the root of every single hair. Something made of stars and rainbows and all that cheesy bullshit.

"Sure thing," she answers in a daze. She has waited for centuries, and she doesn't mind waiting for more. She knows very well it will take a long time. She knows the dent Rose left can't be healed easily. She knows Pearl is still far from being in love.

But she doesn't care. Yet. This feels good.

Garnet arrives next day, and she knows Pearl will be an anxious mess as soon as the sun cracks the darkness with the pastel colors of dawn. She knows neither of them look forward to that re-encounter, save, maybe, for the fact Steven will get back home to inject the walls with his cheery aura.

But, she thinks, as she snuggles against her under the blankets, that doesn't matter for tonight.

I hope you enjoyed! I took the time to proofread the crepe out of this before posting... It was worth it. I have no idea how but I feel my writing improved a bit since last time I wrote and I guess thats good.

I hope I can post more soon ;-; especially smut ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)