Work Text:
(Prompt: Dare)
“Drink it! Drink it!” Amethyst chanted, clapping her hands together in delight as she watched the older gem with the bottle in her hands. She’d come good on her word, and dragged the other away from the stresses of the temple to crash on the beach with her. Usually Pearl would have protested at just the thought of trying to eat or drink, but with everything that had been going on, she’d been surprisingly happy to follow her down onto the sand.
“All of it?”
“Yes! Go!”
“Alright then…” With an expression that almost looked like a smile, Pearl finally tipped the bottle up and drained it in one go, shivering a little in surprise at the feeling running through her. She’d never really bothered to mess with human substances before, she wasn’t like Amethyst, she’d been reserved and well behaved since they landed on earth. She had her suspicions the younger wasn’t going to let her stay that way much longer.
“Gez, P. Never meet anyone like Whiskey that much!” The younger teased, taking the empty bottle and switching it for another full one from the bag that Vidalia had pressed into her hands after she’d bounced into her house with her plan to get her senior hammered: “You’re gonna be drunk before me.”
Amethysts joke came true almost an hour and three bottles of whiskey later, the two of them where sprawled out in the sand, the fire they’d build singing down into ash behind their heads.
“You know something Ame…” The older muttered, glancing sideways through the haze of alcohol that was clouding her vision and smiling at her. It seemed a gem alcohol capabilities where much higher than a humans, she’d watched Roses boyfriend fall asleep after barley three glasses, but it had been somewhere in the middle of the second bottle that she’d started to feel cotton wool in her head: “I don’t actually hate you.”
“Oh really?” The younger snorted, rolling onto her side to poke her in the head with a laugh: “You sure that’s not just the booze talking, P?”
“Whiskey doesn’t talk.” She protested, batting the others fingertips away lightly before she started to poke at her gem. Amethyst probably didn’t know what that would do, and she had not desire to let her find out: “It’s a liquid. Can’t speak.”
The purple gem laughed, finishing her roll to prop herself up on her elbows, head still cocked in the direction of her partner: “Bet if I turned into a puddle I could talk.”
“We’re not supposed to turn into inanimate objects.”
“Nah, you ain’t, homegirl. I’ve not no rules.”
The older snorted, shifting herself as she rescued the bottle: “Be glad you’re not. Homeworld loved rules, they had rules for everything. Even breathing.”
“Breathing?” Amethyst grabbed the bottle out of the others hand and pressed it to her own mouth, sipping it as she cocked her head a little to throw a confused look at her: “How’d you get a rule on breathing?”
“Gems technically don’t have to do it. So on homeworld, we were banned to save us using the brain power to do it.”
“Breathing don’t take brains.”
“I know. You can do it.” Pearl took the others look of complete horror to grab the bottle back, giggling at her expression.
“Asshole.” Amethyst snorted, but her own grin was back: “So what else where you banned from?”
“Fusion… Relationships…. Freedom…” The older gem pushed the bottle back over and flopped back down into the sand, tucking one arm behind her head: “Friendship… this.” She waved one arm in the air above her head, indicating the sky above her.
“Homeworld doesn’t have a sky?” Amethyst asked, downing the remnants of the whiskey and throwing it behind her and into the dying fire.
“Not that.” The other snapped: “It has one. I meant space… you can’t even see the stars from there… When Rose… she offered me the chance to got to space. To travel… to come here. I had to.”
“So… whadd’ya really follow, Rose or what she offered?”
Pearl stopped midway through forming her answer, thinking about that. What had she followed? She’d never really wondered about that before. Rose had always been such an important gem to her that she’d convinced herself that it was her she’d followed.
Amethyst noticed the weird look on her accomplices face and moved, crawling through the sand to grab at the bag she’d brought again, pulling free the final bottle. It was something of Vidalias own creation, and the last time the purple gem had touched it, she’d worked up as a cat fast asleep on top of the big doughnut.
“Here.” She pushed the bottle into the others hands and disturbed her from her daydream, grinning at her: “Drink that, then tell me.”
The lighter didn’t protest, uncorking it and sipping at the mixture with a slight frown: “Tastes like…weird.”
“Viv called it soul medicine.” Amethyst pointed out with a grin, scrambling back over and sitting infront of the other gem: “So come on, fess. Tell me everything.”
With another, much deeper drink, she started to talk, beginning to come clean about the entire story to the younger, from the moment they’d left homeworld, to the moment they’d discovered the little amethyst gem still asleep in her kindergarten cell.
The youngest listened with an open mouth, starting at her in complete amazement as she made a hole in the bottle, pushing it back at the other to encourage her to keep talking, intent on finding out most of the story.
Unfortunately. Vidalia’s concoction seemed to have plans for the two of them, and what could have easily been explained through a nice peaceful discussion quickly became a re-enactment. Pearl was on her feet, spear in hand as she dragged her friend up too, offering her the second blade as she recalled one of the tales she remembered from the war.
The more she explained, the louder they became, shrieking and singing as they neared the end of the tale, Amethyst summoning her own weapon to re-enact the crystal gems discovery of her, flicking the straps around the others ankles and toppling her to onto her ass exactly the same way she’d done then. The older gem cried her indignation and downed the last of the bottle just before the other collapsed down on top of her in a giggling heap.
Garnet had been sent to find the other two when Rose had noticed them missing after almost six hours, fearing that they’d been captured or tried to kill each other or something stupid. She suspected that Roses strange worries where somehow related to the seven month old baby inside her, but she’d done it anyway.
She hadn’t expected to find the two gems passed out in the sand, curled up together in a pile of empty alcohol bottles and abandoned weapons. She’d never seen either of them asleep before, and it was almost amusing to watch.
Bending down, she scooped them both up, unceremoniously tucking one under each arm and heading back up to the temple, the first smile in months curling at the corners of her lips.