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Gem’s taking advantage of the rare quiet moment at her base to dig out another corner of the basement under her barn. She hums over the clinking of pickaxe against stone, a little tune half-formed from somewhere in the back of her brain. In the quiet, she lets her train of thought race away from her; for a moment, it’s like she’s back on Hermitcraft, adding to the interior of one of her coastal houses.
She’s out of it enough, in fact, that she doesn’t notice the sound of the trapdoor opening, or the soft whispering of fabric behind her.
“Oh, Gem,” a voice croons, hands on Gem’s shoulders before she can even realize anyone is there with her. She nearly jumps several feet in the air, with how hard she flinches.
It’s Pearl, because of course it is. Who else would be hanging around Gem’s base so intently? (Who else would be able to get the drop on Gem like that?) She curses the fact that she’s let her guard down enough for anyone to sneak up on her at all; this is a death game. She’d do well to remember that. Especially with Joel away, off at the moment to… harass Scott, or something. Gem’s not sure. It doesn’t matter though, not when the end result is the same: Gem is alone, except for the skulking, wolfish woman standing in front of her.
“Pearl,” she says, trying to hide the fact that she’s out of breath. “ What are you doing here?”
“I’m just hanging out!”
Gem sighs. She can still hear her heart pounding away in her chest, frantic as a rabbit. She lays her pickaxe off to the side, leaning the handle against the rough-hewn wall. “Sure you are.”
“Aw, what,” Pearl whines, a shit-eating grin plastered across her face. “Can I not say hi to my dearest friend?”
“We’re not friends this season, Pearl,” Gem reminds her, eyebrow arched high. As subtly as she can, she palms the scabbard hanging from her belt—just in case. She’s backed into a corner, after all, and the dark green of her eyes paints her as a target to someone like Pearl, already-red. As if Pearl didn’t have enough motivation to go after her already, what with the tension between their teams, with the sword of last game hanging over their heads.
Pearl takes a step forward. With her height, with the broadness of her blood-red cloak, it’s almost threatening. (Although, Gem thinks, Pearl couldn’t be truly threatening if she tried. She’s a little too… wet-cat-like, for that.) Still, though, it’s a precarious position to be in. Gem lets her fingers close, loose but ready, around the hilt of her sword.
Pearl notices, this time. “Don’t do that,” she says. “We’re just having a chat.” Gem still eyes her warily, especially as Pearl steps closer again .
“Calm down,” Pearl chides. “You’re not scared of little old me, are you?”
Gem laughs in her face. “Scared is definitely the wrong word. I’m just… cautious. You know how it is. Gotta be careful to stay green, this late in the game.” Defiantly, she lets her hand fall from her hip, as though to prove the point. Pearl’s no real threat to her.
While she talks, Pearl creeps in more and more, until she’s practically got Gem pinned up against the wall. She raises an unarmed hand from beneath her cloak; Gem tracks the movement with just her eyes, wary. But Pearl doesn’t move to attack, doesn’t go for the mace on her back or the dagger on her hip. Instead, she reaches forward and pinches Gem’s cheek with her long, bony fingers.
Gem sputters, surprised; Pearl cackles, low and crooning. “You’re so cute,” she says, and then she’s ducking her head down.
Her lips, dry and chapped, collide with Gem’s. Gem makes a muffled noise of surprise, and then Pearl nips at her bottom lip and she melts into the kiss.
Pearl, just the same as she moves like a wounded animal, kisses like one too—she’s all teeth and sharp edges, clawed thumb digging into the skin under Gem’s eye. Gem feels Pearl’s other hand at her waist, holding her there ferociously with an unmatched firmness.
Their teeth clack when Gem surges forward into the contact, her own hand sneaking under Pearl’s hood to tangle in her messy hair. Pearl whines, high and keening and canine—and then Gem’s pushed back, well and properly up against the wall, pinned in place by the burning points of contact between the two of them. The breath floods from Gem’s lungs, and she pulls back for a moment to look up at Pearl, who’s looking back at her with hooded eyes. Her long lashes cast a longer shadow across her high and angled cheekbones in the dim lantern-light. Her tongue sneaks between her arched lips, smudging her lipstick further than it already was.
“I—” she starts, and Gem tugs at her hair to get her to shut up.
“Not a word,” Gem gasps. She’s the one to initiate, this time, diving back in before Pearl can make fun of her for her eagerness. Not that Pearl has any room to talk—she’s just as enthusiastic. It takes two to tango—or, in this case, have an ill-advised makeout session in the middle of a death game that they’re ostensibly on opposite sides of.
Pearl steps in even closer, so that she and Gem are pressed up against each other, chest-to-chest. One of her legs tangles with Gem’s. As cold as Pearl is, as sharp as an icicle formed in the bitter cold of the winter, she has a fiery hunger about her. It’s what primes her so perfectly for the bloody frenzy of a red life, the desperate scrap that the ending always becomes.
Gem’s hand finds Pearl’s back, yanking her shirt out from where it’s tucked into her jean shorts so she can caress the hot skin of her lower back. Pearl makes a soft noise at that, one that travels into Gem’s teeth and embeds itself in her skull and in her stomach alike. Every though in her head floats away, with that. Time and rationality stop mattering quite so much.
She doesn’t know how long it is before Pearl pulls back, panting. Gem appraises her, for a moment; for all her angles and rough edges, there’s the faintest hint of tenderness to her scarlet eyes. Her black lipstick is smeared haphazardly across the entire lower half of her face; Gem knows she probably looks much the same.
It is, unfortunately, not much of a surprise when she feels cold metal at her side, digging into her flesh through the denim of her overalls. Of course, she thinks—the knife is right at the weak spot in her armor, a weak spot that must’ve been trivial for Pearl to find at these close quarters.
Pearl flashes her a grin. “Sorry,” she says, although even just that single word drips with bloodlust and faux-remorse. “I really want you red, Gem.”
Gem hardly lets her finish her sentence before she’s stomping, hard, on Pearl’s foot. Pearl yips, and Gem takes the opportunity to snatch her armed hand by the wrist, twisting it fiercely. When Pearl still doesn’t drop the knife, holding onto it with a dogged determination, she wrests the hand still entangled in Pearl’s hair, yanking until Pearl bows under her grip, hissing in pain. Gem shoves her, face-first, against the cold stone cellar wall.
“Drop it,” she snarls, up on her tippy-toes so she can speak right into Pearl’s ear. Pearl shudders under her—it’s almost distracting.
“Alright, jeez, fine,” she whines, and there’s a clattering of metal on stone. “You’re no fun!”
Gem lets her go, snatching up the knife and darting halfway across the room so that she’s thoroughly out of range of any more of Pearl’s shenanigans. Pearl, though, doesn’t try and chase her—instead, she straightens her cloak around her shoulders, claws at her hair to try and detangle the mess that Gem left there.
“You’re pathetic,” Gem tells her, a little too defensively. She knows her face is bright red, can feel the blood hot under her cheeks; and from the way Pearl’s looking at her, sharp-toothed and leery, she’s noticed too. Joke’s still on Pearl, though—she’s just as disheveled.
“Aww, Gem, c’mon,” Pearl says. “It almost worked. You gotta give me some credit.”
Gem scoffs, rolls her eyes. “Get out of here.” She watches as Pearl shakes her head like a wet dog, wipes at her mouth as though it’ll clear the smudged mess there, and then she makes for the ladder up to the ground floor.
As she passes Gem, she slows down for just a moment. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” she promises. “Very soon.” Her eyes gleam in the low light. For a moment there’s an eeriness to her, an echo to her voice that lasts a little longer than it should. An unnaturally-cold wind ruffles Gem’s hair, even though they’re underground. It sends a chill down her back.
And then the moment passes. Gem bucks her chin up, looks Pearl right in the eyes defiantly. “Go back to your actual base, you nuisance.”
Pearl laughs. “Alright, alright. I’m leaving, calm yourself.” Finally, she scales the ladder, clambering through the hole in the floor above. Gem watches her go, only half-disappointed at the loss. And then she follows, to make sure Pearl really leaves, and doesn’t try any of that sculk sensor nonsense again.
(When Joel comes back, she’s still at the mirror, trying her absolute best to scrub away the black lipstick stains around her mouth. He takes one look at her and bursts out laughing—at least until she reminds him of the life he lost chasing after Lizzie.)