Chapter Text
“Holy shit Amethyst, come check this out!”
It was a normal Friday night for the self-titled ‘cool kids’ of their year. Immediately after school finished for the week, Amethyst, Jasper and Peridot would go out and – depending on how much money they had accrued – spend the majority of it on drinks, snacks or weed. All were cash sinks in their own right and tended to feed into one another, but Peridot was fairly on point with calculating their average spending. After that they’d stay up well after midnight consuming whatever they got however they wanted and played games, watched shitty movies or occasionally made out.
Tonight’s source of fun was an idea Peridot had pushed on them. She had set up a fake profile on a dating website she claimed was a ‘goldmine of entertainment’. Jasper provided a picture of her cousin Lapis (naturally without permission) and after selecting a random set of likes and dislikes they were browsing. They had found a few laughs in the first couple of hours, but nothing to write home about. Jasper and Amethyst had gotten a little uneasy with Peridot’s obsession to find more as the night drew on. Either she really wanted to be right, or she was actually trying to find a partner for herself. Neither were very good reasons.
Amethyst was half-asleep when she heard her name called out. She brushed the bag of whatever snack food was strewn across her shirt off her and onto the bed, letting out a dazed ‘h-wuh?’ before crawling to its end. Peridot was sitting beneath it, clutching her sides as she laughed uncontrollably, and Jasper was wiping tears from her eyes. Bouncing in Peridot’s lap was the laptop she had spent hours hunched over. Amethyst leaned forward to pick it up, curious what had warranted being called out by name. Her eye’s widened as she saw the picture.
“No way…”
She glanced over to the name and location, her mouth hanging open as a dumb smile formed on it. She could feel air forcibly escaping her mouth in a silent laugh.
“No. Fucking. Way.”
It was Pearl. She knew her from several of her mandatories, and that was more than enough to make this hilarious. She was strict, obnoxiously smart, volunteered as student rep for all her classes and as far as Amethyst knew, never smiled. She always had this disapproving scowl that kept her seated at the far end of the class. If it was hard enough to approach this girl on as little as a friendly level, how did she expect anyone would want to date her?
“Man, look at her picture! She almost looks human!” Amethyst howled, clutching her forehead in one hand and her heart in the other. Her picture was a self-portrait taken from the waist up. It could easily have been mistaken for a school photo, but despite how formally she was dressed she wasn’t wearing the uniform. It was shot up against a plain wall, but there seemed to be a lot of work put into the lighting. Her hands were clenched together in front of her stomach just out of shot, but the positioning of the camera and the background suggested it was a timed camera that had taken the photo. She had a rather embarrassing smile, one she looked like she was being forced to make at gunpoint.
“That’s not even the best part!” Jasper laughed as she clambered up onto the bed. One of her hands – naturally the messier, crumb-stained one – gripped the top of the laptop’s screen as the other pointed to a small section underneath her picture. It took a few seconds for Amethyst to see what exactly she was pointing at, but when she did her mouth opened even wider to the point that her jaw hurt.
“Holy shit, Wonder Nerd’s gay?!”
It was hard for her to believe it, but there it was. Right under Jasper’s greasy finger it stated, ‘Preference: Female Only’. This was confirmed again in her description, which Amethyst was compelled to read in a mocking voice.
“’Artistic individual looking for equal minded parties. Female only. Hobbies include reading, fencing and violin.’ Oh my god, her profile is like some old divorced lady.”
Her laughter was cut short with a shriek, bouncing the laptop back and forth in her lap before reaching out and dropping it back into Peridot’s unexpecting hands, who responded with her own cry. The page had refreshed and now underneath her basic information was a small icon with a link next to it that read ‘Pearl is (Online)!’
Peridot tilted her head back towards Amethyst, baring her gritted teeth as she prepared to hurl an insult. However, that was quickly redirected to Jasper when she noticed the nasty Cheeto-grime on her screen and now covering the webcam.
“Jasper I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t touch my things when your hands are dirty!”
Jasper responded with a shrug, leaning in to find out what had caused the freak-out. She raised an eyebrow and rolled over on the bed, picking up another bag of chips. She ate upside down for a few seconds before her idea finished formulating in her head, shoving herself further down until her head just about touched the small geek’s thigh.
“Hey, you know what we should do?!”
Peridot narrowed her eyes as she looked down to the grinning woman, who waggled her finger in a gesture to come closer. She leaned down and rested her ear close to Jasper’s lips. She held her hand next to it, whispering into her ear. Amethyst shuffled forward and hung her head over the edge of the bed, curious what the two were discussing without her. Her brow furrowed, scooting down as she tried to catch a few of the words. Before she could grasp anything from their conversation, they had stopped talking and turned their heads to her, grinning from cheek to cheek.
“Want to pull a prank on her?”
It took them a few minutes to sort things out. Jasper and Amethyst paced around the room, arms crossed as they tried to list off subjects they were aware she enjoyed. It wasn’t too difficult, as she was very quick to lord her tastes over others. Peridot had her glasses pushed all the way up the bridge of her nose, furiously typing in an attempt to fill their profile out and appear less… Well, fake. Their brains felt like they were steaming from overuse by the time she was done, but now they were ready. They were going to play her like a damn fiddle.
Peridot was left in control of the laptop. She had the best writing skills of the trio (though there wasn’t much contest) so the impersonation would be left to her. She clicked on the link and a small chat window opened up in the corner of the screen. After taking a deep breath to get into character, her fingers took to the keyboard once again as she introduced her character.
‘Hello! I was lucky you happened to be online when I logged in. I would have left a message earlier, but it felt too formal.’
While Peridot was already squinting at the screen, the other two were trying to snicker quietly behind her back. Amethyst was laid down on the bed, resting her jaw on her hands as she watched. Jasper was sitting next to her, one of her arms crossed over her chest as she propped the other’s hand over her mouth. It was a decent minute or two before a response popped up.
‘No need to worry! I understand how that can feel. Nice to meet a fellow strings enthusiast. :)’
Jasper was already laughing very loudly at this point. Her hand went to wipe her eyes again before resting it on her chest in mock sympathy. “Oh, what it must be like to be a 50 year old trapped in the body of a teenager…”
Amethyst showed a bit more decorum, chuckling into her hand as Peridot worked up a response.
‘Same here. Any chance you’re available this weekend? I’d like to get to know you better.’
Peridot pulled her eyes from the screen to look up to her accomplices, feeling a bead of sweat form on her brow. She exhaled loudly, leaning back against the bed and resting her arms up on it. She threw her head back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering if she had gone too far. If Pearl said no now, this would have been a night she completely wasted. But when she glanced back and forth between Amethyst and Jasper’s expressions they were still laughing. She looked back down to see a new message.
‘I would love to! Do you have any preferences on where you’d like to meet up?’
She grinned and adjusted her glasses. This was going to be hilarious.