Chapter Text
There’s a blaring guitar riff echoing in the corridor and by God forgive her, but she will not hesitate to do unimaginable horrors if her roommate does not stop that this instant.
When Pearl takes long, confident strides, she is secure and uninhibited. But the recesses of noise coming from her room give rise for concern; the hallway is normally only forty-seven steps long, but today it’s thirty-three. She sprints, a hand the only shield between exposure and decency, gripping the towel like a lifeline, and the door slams open. Suddenly her ears are filled with profanities and something akin to metal screeching, if it could.
“Jesus holy shit—”
“What are you doing? What the heck is that noise?” Pearl catches herself, knees bent and right hand gripping the doorknob for balance. She can hear rustling outside.
“I don’t know! My alarm just went fucking nuts. I think it’s broken.”
“You play this—this garbage as your alarm?” Her brows furrow and her arms wildly gesture to the criminal who, upon Pearl’s morbid realization, has yet to cease playing. A series of “Fuck!”s and arrangements of throaty screaming make her cover her ears.
That only makes her towel fall down her lithe body, and with a squeal, she rushes down to gather it up and cover her body, cheeks turning purple with embarrassment. Oh God, oh God, the noise is horrible and she can barely hear herself think and Amethyst is laughing like a twelve-year-old.
“Hey, it wakes me up, and it usually isn’t this loud. Maybe you’d know that if you didn’t take showers at three in the morning and came back before nine!” She retorts, fumbling with her phone yet clearly enjoying herself.
“The showers are crowded in the morning, and I’m not going to stand there with a bunch of other naked girls!” She defends, flushes furiously, frowns and stomps her feet in nearly the same exasperated motion. If Amethyst is a twelve-year-old, then she’s eight.
“What, you’re seriously embarrassed?” Amethyst snorts, abandoning the phone in pursuit of a much richer experience. “That’s fucking precious.”
“Would you,” Pearl lunges for the phone, both hands jumping to action. “Quit being,” She grounds her teeth in frustration, “So difficult!”
She heaves, letting the phone fall on Amethyst’s bedsheet in defeat. The noise abruptly fizzles out, and Pearl can finally take in her surroundings without interruption, though she almost wishes she hadn’t. There’s an entire crowd of students in the hallway, some gathered at their door, some frustrated and groaning in resentment, and others giggling and snorting. Pearl counts six girls she can see herself in the dim light of the corridor.
Gathering up her phone, Amethyst’s lips curl into an ‘o.’ “Oh, shit, I think I set the alarm for three a.m. instead of three p.m.” Pearl squints in the dark to barely make out a hint of color on the girl’s cheeks.
“Are you—are you serious,” Pearl croaks, gasping for air and too overwhelmed to yell. She runs a hand across her large forehead, grazing her wet hairline.
Amethyst looks stunned for a moment, tilts her head. Pearl tries to follow her gaze to no avail. Then, she grins wickedly. “Didn’t take you for an exhibitionist, P, but damn.” She whistles lewdly, and Pearl looks confused for a moment.
Then she looks down. The towel pools around her feet, body still dripping wet, and she doesn’t even want to describe how the rest of her body has reacted to the cold air. She turns, wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights, and jumps to action.
She slams the door shut and turns the lights on, giving Amethyst a clear glance at her butt. She’s sure Amethyst is grinning like a dog.
“I—I’m not—” she stutters, reaching for her towel and flailing for at least a fraction of her dignity that has since shattered by a copious amount of unnecessary cussing and mooning. Her stomach drops as the realization of what exactly just happened hits her.
“Maybe if you actually had boobs your towel’d stay up,” Amethyst shrugged, adding fuel to the fire. She leans back into the pillows of her bed, stretching and folding her arms behind her head. “Still. Kinky.”
“Oh would you just,” Pearl huffs, feet pounding the carpet (and most likely annoying some poor clod on the second floor) towards her dresser, quickly dressing herself in a budding white blouse and teal skirt. She notices that Amethyst has been watching her as she slides on a flat. “S-stop that!”
Amethyst elects to totally and completely ignore that.
Well, that was a bit of a fiasco. But it can’t get any worse than that, right?
That’s where Pearl was wrong. Really, she should’ve known better than to think that; it’s a well-known cliché that asking if, by some mysterious turn of events, things can go wrong, then they will. It might as well be a natural law at this point.
Being in her English class, she really should’ve known better, because it was these kinds of clichés she was supposed to know forwards and backwards. So much for studying, so much for anything, really, she might as well say goodbye to her education and go home with her head hanging low; she could’ve sworn she felt all eyes on her anyways when she entered the classroom, large and uninviting.
She takes a seat, tumultuous chatter filling the momentary silence that came to be when she entered. The uneasiness stagnated when the professor came in—late, as usual, Pearl scoffed—and she thought that maybe, just maybe, this might be a normal, everyday class.
The sun was bright through the windows, so she proposed switching seats for the day. She chose a spot further back and on the opposite side, and although she regretted being unable to sit in the front row, at least she was still somewhat close. Morning classes were usually fairly empty, somehow just passing the quota for required students in order for the professor to actually be able to teach the class, which made moving seats much easier. Nobody would get prissy with you for stealing their chair.
Of course, most people were prissy for other reasons, including the unwanted wake-up-call of a six a.m. alarm. Lapis, however, was not one of those people. A night person by default who could somehow function in the morning, she reserved her voice for only when spoken to, and rarely made conversation. They had talked a bit before through some mutual friends.
Pearl sets her bag down, and Lapis gives her a questionable look.
“Sun’s too bright,” Pearl explains, seating herself. Lapis nods, running a hand through her dyed hair.
“Is the essay due today or Thursday?” Lapis asks.
“Thursday, and don’t forget the citations this time.” Pearl smiles. “You don’t want a repeat performance.”
“One angry Professor Callaghan is enough to last a lifetime,” Lapis agrees. “Did you read?”
“Of course,” Pearl says, as though the question were unnecessary. “I can assume you didn’t.”
“No, I did. I just didn’t really understand some bits of it.” She sighs, prodding the book on the table. “It’s so boring. The main girl hasn’t even been introduced and we’re already practically halfway through.”
“It’s a good read. You’ll appreciate it once you get further in.”
“Wait, you’ve read it before?” Lapis questions, stunned.
“In high school,” Pearl furrows her brow. “You didn’t?”
“Who the hell reads Silas Marner in high school?”
“Pearl, apparently,” a voice calls behind them.
“Says the one who didn’t read last night’s assignment.” Lapis grins. “I heard we have a pop quiz today, too.”
“A pop—oh jeez.” Fumbling glasses, Peridot turns away from the two and cracks open her laptop on what Pearl can only presume to be sparknotes.
“I’d ask if you could help me, but I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
“More important things?” Pearl asks, surprised. What could she possibly have to do today? Did she leave the washing machine running? Or did Amethyst not put her clothes in the bin like she asked? Maybe there was more homework to do in Geology.
“I—” Lapis frowns. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
There’s a collection of “ooh”s behind her, and Pearl turns around to see Jasper and Peridot snickering to themselves. Pearl cranes her neck and notices a few students whispering in the corner of the room, and doubt seeds her stomach.
“Um,” Lapis begins, “some pictures of you are going around.”
Pearl freezes.
“Pictures?”
“Well, sort of. I mean… nobody can really tell it’s you, and I think most if not all of the captions have your name anonymous—”
Her heartbeat sinks to the pit of her gut.
“Oh God,” she whispers, “oh God.”
Going full damage-control, Lapis waves her hands. “No, no! It’s fine, Pearl, really. Nobody can even tell it’s you.”
“You could!” Pearl hisses through her teeth, staring down at the wooden desk. Her hands clutch at her skirt, forehead pressing against the desk. Let this be a dream, let this all just be a horrible dream. God, what did she do to deserve this?
Lapis remains silent for a moment. “Well, when you wake up the entire dorm at three in the morning with some heavy metal accompaniment, it’s hard to forget. Besides, it’s just a picture. It’ll probably be gone within a week at most. Just give it some time.”
Time. Right. Time. She could be patient. She could totally be patient. It was practically in her blood—what with forty years spent wandering the desert and all. One week, seven days, one hundred sixty-eight hours. Totally doable.
The incident happened on Monday, early morning. Today was Tuesday, so that was already day one crossed off the metaphorical list (well, she had a calendar, so really she had all the power to make it a physical list), and tomorrow was ballet. She wouldn’t have to think about it then, especially if she stayed out of the dorm the entire day. Thursday she had classes again, and her essay was due; she also had to remember to call her mom, since Chanukah was in a few months and she would need to go home for the holidays. Friday would be simple enough, and maybe she could escape the dorms with Garnet on the weekend.
Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she had been overreacting just a little bit.
Maybe, just a little.
Garnet’s eyes, hidden more behind a facet of coolness rather than her sunglasses, glance to and from Pearl’s morbid gaze and the image page. Pearl has been tapping on the half-wall without clicking anything else for several minutes, staring at the simple picture. There are a few that have slightly different angles, some that have more “booty” than others, but Pearl has the same horrifying reaction to each and every one of them. Her teeth pull at her bottom lip.
“Yikes.” That’s a pretty big view count.
“Goodness, Garnet, it’s awful. I can’t believe someone took pictures of it,” she whines, letting her head fall in her lap, but careful not to damage her laptop.
“I can.”
“Can—can what?”
“I can believe it,” Garnet clarifies, leaning over Pearl’s shoulder, who flinches away with her laptop carefully cradled.
“W—d-don’t look at them! I don’t need all of my friends seeing this too—it’s bad enough strangers are seeing it. God, Garnet, the school year just started two weeks ago, and it’s already gone completely downhill.” She rubs at her eyes. “What am I going to do?”
“There’s nothing you can do, Pearl. You just have to wait until the situation dies down.”
Pearl glances to her, offended. “I can’t just do nothing! There has to be something I can do. Maybe… maybe I can go to the RA! She could make whoever put those pictures up to take them down, or—”
“Pearl.”
She heaves a cartoonish sigh, letting her shoulders droop in dismay. “I know, I know. But… I just feel so powerless, so useless. Can’t you just tell me what to do?”
“Alright. Stop.”
“Stop?”
“Stop trying to fix a situation you can’t change.” Pearl rubs a hand over her forehead, then moves down to pinch her nose. The sun isn’t as bright, now, hiding behind a clump of withered, white clouds. But the heat is definitely still there, mixed with the humidity of the nearby beach. It would be unbearable if Pearl wasn’t wearing a tank top and shorts.
“Hey, Garnet, P. What’s up?” On cue, Amethyst nearly makes Pearl jump (and, by extension, nearly drop her laptop on the stone hard ground) and takes a seat next to her. Her shirt flutters with her movement, and Pearl almost instinctively reaches out to fix her falling strap, but resists. Barely. She has more pressing matters than an unsymmetrical shirt. “Man, G, aren’t you hot in that?”
Garnet’s hands move to tug on the collar of her jeans jacket. “I know I’m hot in this.” She winks, and Amethyst slaps the stone wall in a fit of laughter.
“Not now,” Pearl grumbles, refreshing the page constantly. Like it’ll help any.
Amethyst nods almost philosophically. “Right, right, Miss Butt Bummer over here’s still tight about her little three a.m. mishap.”
“Which was your fault.”
“Hey, well,” Amethyst pauses. “eh, I guess that’s fair. At least it was just a butt. Coulda been a lot worse.” She grins. “Way worse. Though I did get more of an eyeful than anybody else, so I guess I should be counting my cards. Or was it chickens. Eggs?”
“Amethyst!” Pearl glares, eyes wide.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, P. Hell, I think you could be more popular than some porn stars.” Amethyst grins, nudging Pearl with her elbow.
Pearl hollows. “Oh God. Oh God, I’m gonna be sick.”
Garnet eyes Amethyst, who shrugs. “I’m just being honest. She’s got kind of a cute butt. But she could really use a bit more beef around the areas that count—”
“Okay,” Pearl folds her laptop and stands up, “that’s it. You two can talk about my physical proportions and anatomy where I. Can’t. Hear. And I’m going to go over there,” she points elsewhere, “so I don’t have to hear. God, Amethyst, do you have to be so crass?”
She doesn’t give Amethyst a chance to answer before walking away, hand gripping her laptop much tighter than she intended. Her dorm was a block down, past the student parking; her books were on the shelf next to the door, as well as next to Amethyst’s half-empty box of chocolates. If she could dodge the busy courtyard and take a shortcut through the bookstore, she might be able to get there without accidentally seeing someone she knew coming out of the library—specifically, Mrs. Rose Quartz. Her stomach hurt when she entertained the thought that she might know about the embarrassingly lecherous photographs—she might just vomit thinking about it.
She’d have to tell her anyways, she supposed. Mrs. Quartz was the RA for her dorm, and there was a pretty big chance that she heard—or maybe even saw herself. Oh God. Pearl starts walking faster.
She barely takes six strides away before Pearl catches a familiar sight in the corner of her eye. And then wishes she hadn’t seen it at all.
“Oh, Pearl!” The man calls after, rushing up to her in a hurried sprint. He’s sweating all over, and his face is red. It’s… charming, to say the least. And kind of disgusting at worst.
“Dewey,” she calls him by his last name, “um, hey. What... are you doing?”
“Well, I—I guess you could say I heard the news? I was just here to let you know that if you ever need a friend or someone to help, or, or a shoulder to cry on, you can always let me know.”
Pearl’s face grows cold. “Oh goodness, don’t tell me you—”
“No, no, no, d-don’t worry! I didn’t look, not even a peek!” He’s flustered, trying to appear at least somewhat composed. It’s not really working. Pearl would take pity on him if she weren’t so absolutely horrified herself.
“I—uh,” she stutters, trying to figure out what to say—she can hardly believe Dewey knows about it, and if he knows about it… oh no. “T-thanks…?”
He laughs nervously. “D-don’t mean it! I-I mean, don’t mention it.” He spirals into another nervous chuckle before pointing elsewhere with a sweaty thumb. “I, uh, I’ve got some, uh, business to take care of so, uh, I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah, sure, I… guess.”
“Cool! Sweat! I mean, sweet!” He sputters, stumbling off elsewhere. Pearl’s lower eyelid twitches, and Amethyst roars in laughter.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you just said that. He’s totally going to think of that as a date.”
Pearl looks over to her. “A date with no time, no place, no plans? I… don’t think so. Look, I’ve got to get to class,” she says, pulling her laptop to her ribs and scuffling along.
“How does he not realize that Pearl’s gay. She may think she’s fooling everyone, but the only fool she’s fooling is Dewey.” Garnet nods, watching Dewey walk away, then looks down at Amethyst, arms crossed. Amethyst stares after Pearl for some time, then turns back. There's a rather lascivious smile donning her thick lips. She winks.
“What? I hate to watch her leave, but I love to watch her go.”