Work Text:
Rain poured down onto the front porch in sheets. Lightning sliced through the sky in jagged arcs, and thunder boomed like a heavenly gong.
Pearl sighed.
“Guess we can’t have that picnic…” She frowned, leaning against the doorframe.
Gem wandered out from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a yawn. She plopped her chin onto Pear’s shoulder, though she had to lean further to be at the right height. She idly threaded her fingers through the red curls that brushed her face, and Gem sighed with a smile.
“What’s going on?” She hummed. “Why can’t we go?”
She rubbed her eyes tiredly, blinking the sleep from them.
“It’s raining too hard. We can’t picnic in that weather.” She said dejectedly, leaning her head on top of Gem’s.
Disappointment wormed into her stomach. They had been planning this for so long, and she had so been looking forward to it. The fire station had been busy the past few weeks; between the sudden heatwave on the south side of town and the uptick in kitchen fires, Pearl had hardly been home at all. When Gem pointed out that her day off lined up with Pearl’s, they’d jumped at the opportunity to do something together.
Now, it was all going down the drain. She watched her hopes wash down the road like the leaves that clogged up the gutters.
“Just one nice day…” She muttered quietly, squeezing her eyes shut. “Is that so hard?”
Gem pressed her warm mug into Pearl’s hand. She let out the breath she had been holding and reached down to tangle their fingers together, but where she thought her hand would be, she was met with empty air. When she opened her eyes, she only caught a blur of orange and a whoop of excitement as Gem dashed out into the rain.
“Hey!” She yelled after her, glancing between the mug in her hand and the blanket tossed carelessly onto the floor.
Out on the sidewalk, Gem twirled and laughed, thoroughly soaking her clothes with a grin on her face. Pearl leaned as far out the door as she dared, cupping her hands around her mouth.
“Come back inside! You’re getting all wet!” She called. Gem looked back at her, green eyes sparkling, and opened her arms.
“Come on!” She yelled back. “The water’s fine!”
Pearl rolled her eyes and stamped her foot.
“No, the water is cold and miserable and you’re going to get sick!” She argued. “What are you doing out there?”
Gem paid her no mind. She kicked up a spray of water with her bare feet, splashed in puddles, did a cartwheel down the sidewalk. The water had no doubt soaked all the way through her braids, but she didn’t seem to notice.
It must have soaked through her brain, too. Pearl thought with a huff.
“Get inside!” She tried one more time.
Once again, Gem ignored her. She turned around and stuck out her tongue, then spun in a circle and plopped down into a puddle. Pearl winced; her poor pajamas, completely drenched, all because of one crazy lady.
She groaned, muttering about why in the world she would have ever chosen to marry someone like her. She checked the shelves near the door for an umbrella, and after far too long of shuffling things around, she snatched it out from under a pile of winter gloves and hats.
Grumbling all the way, she pulled on her work boots, only because she had nothing better, and flicked open the umbrella just outside the door. She rushed out into the rain, doing her best not to splash the water onto herself, and reached Gem in only a few steps.
“Pearl!” Gem said excitedly, reaching up like a happy child from her place on the wet sidewalk.
“Yeah, yeah, come on, we’re going inside.” She said.
As soon as she offered her hand, Gem smiled devilishly, her eyes crinkling around the edges. Pearl opened her mouth to ask what she was plotting, when she suddenly used the leverage to pull herself up and drag her into a very tight, very soggy hug.
“No, no, no!” Pearl gasped loudly. She kept her arms out of reach so at least they could stay dry, but it had the unfortunate side effect of putting them exactly where she didn’t want them to be: outside the reach of the umbrella, and directly into the rain. “Oh, you!”
Gem laughed, and Pearl fought the urge to forgive her immediately.
“Come on, it’s fun!” She argued, keeping their hands connected but taking a step backward to put herself back in the rain. Pearl chased her movement with the umbrella still clenched in her free hand, which left the hems of her trousers to be soaked by the rain until she caught up and positioned them both underneath the covering.
“This isn’t what I would call fun.” She said with only a touch of distaste for the weather.
Mischief sparkled in Gem’s eyes. They sat in a staring contest for a long minute, refusing to back down or give in, until Gem reached up and cupped her other hand around Pearl’s, holding the handle of the umbrella with her.
Abruptly, Gem pushed a button on the handle and the umbrella snapped shut around them. She laughed wildly into the small space, while Pearl sputtered and fumbled with the mechanism to get it open again while refusing to step out of its dry embrace.
“You—!” She exclaimed. “Oh, you little—”
Gem laughed again. Quicker than Pearl could think—because really, when did Gem do anything cautiously?—she reached up to hold Pearl’s face in her hand. With the momentary distraction, Pearl stopped her fiddling and looked down into her eyes. In the coloured light of the umbrella, she was beautiful, just as she always was. Red covered her face like a filter, highlighting every perfect feature; her crooked nose, the gap in her grin, the crow’s feet beside her eyes.
In the dim, dreary, miserable rain, trying and failing to convince her wife to get out of the weather, Pearl found herself falling in love again.
The moment ended as suddenly as it happened, when Gem slipped the umbrella out of her hand and tossed it onto the sidewalk.
Rain immediately lashed against her face, her arms, every bit of exposed skin, soaking through her clothes and down into her bones. She squawked and covered her head with her arm, then lurched for the umbrella before Gem caught her shoulder and dragged her back.
“Lighten up a little!” She laughed. Pearl blew out a huff of air directly into her face, and she giggled some more.
“I’ll lighten up when the weather does!” She announced, once again reaching for the umbrella. “Until then, we should be inside!”
Gem grasped for her hand and intercepted her mission. Even the umbrella was wet all over, now, but at least it would do something to keep the rain off; at this point, she had nothing to protect her from the torrents of rain, the lightning spanning across the sky.
“Come on now, you’re not having even a little bit of fun?” She asked cheekily.
When Pearl failed to deny it, she spun them around and wrapped her arms around Pearl’s waist. Pearl scoffed and tried to push her off, but Gem held firm, and with one last look at the sky, her arms found their home around her wife’s shoulders.
Sharp, cold drops cut through her skin. They struck everywhere they could reach, leaving no inch of fabric or patch of hair dry. It would take ages to detangle, she groaned internally. Her thoughts sped along, considering all the possibilities. Best case-scenario, they threw their clothes in the dryer, took a warm shower, and spent the rest of the day in bed. Not exactly how Pearl wanted to spend their rare day off, but it wouldn’t be awful, she supposed; she could adjust her plans a bit.
Worst case-scenario, they both contracted pneumonia from being out in the cold, wet rain for so long, and because they didn’t live nearby anybody they knew, they would die in their living room and nobody would find their bodies until the smell started bothering their neighbours.
She worried about what they would do if one of them got sick, or, even worse, both of them. She thought of how they would manage it, who would cook and if they would still go to work, if they would be able to go out at all—then, Gem tucked her nose into the crook of Pearl’s neck, and she stopped thinking entirely.
Minutes slid onward, as they insisted on doing. Pearl lost track of how long they stood that way, wrapped up in each other, chest to chest, being berated by sheets of rain and claps of thunder, before they even considered moving. When they finally did, it was because Gem led her into a slow, jumbled, shaky swing dance. Pearl remembered their first date, all those years ago, when they had gone dancing together.
“You’ve gotten sloppy.” Gem smiled.
Pearl laughed. “And you’ve gotten slow.”
She grinned, bright and wide, lighting up the dreary air between them.
After another minute of dancing, led only by the impossible metronome of the drops drumming on the roof, Gem broke the box-step they’d fallen into by stepping back, kicking up a puddle of water and splashing Pearl in the face.
“Hey!” She shrieked, watching as Gem’s laughter dipped from a giggle into a cackle. In retaliation, she stomped her boot in the puddle and sprayed water into Gem’s face as well, reveling in the way she squawked and wiped her face.
They laughed, and splashed water at each other, and spent nearly an hour running around in the rain like little kids. They chased each other up and down the sidewalk, feet pounding on the concrete and throwing droplets into the air, uncaring of how their clothes stuck to their skin and goosebumps appeared along their arms.
Gem stopped in the road and set her hands on Pearl’s shoulders, both of them breathing heavily and grinning like idiots. She took the hair plastered to Pearl’s face and moved it out of the way, then placed a kiss on her nose. With less care, she shoved her wife onto the asphalt, then fell down next to her.
They stared up at the grey clouds that circled above them. Gem caught raindrops in her mouth while Pearl threw her arm over her eyes to shield them from the rain.
“This is so romantic.” Gem sighed dreamily, shuffling in closer to lean her head against Pearl’s shoulder.
For no reason at all, it punched a laugh out of her. She must have lost it already; the rain had driven her mad, seeped into her brain and washed away all her common sense. She nearly doubled over on the road from how hard it shook her body, while Gem hovered over her, laughing almost as much.
“You’re—” She croaked out between barking laughter, “You’re so weird.”
When she wiped her eyes and looked up, Gem grinned and leaned down to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“Mhm.” She hummed. “I get it from you.”
Just before Pearl could form a response, a car honked at them from down the street. They jumped up and ran for the house, laughing between themselves and throwing apologies to the driver as it puttered past their walkway and around the corner, then out of sight.
They stayed silent for only a moment before catching each other’s eyes and bursting out into laughter again. Gem clutched her stomach while Pearl threw her head back, leaning on each other to avoid falling flat on the ground.
Finally, they caught their breath. Gem held out her hand, and Pearl clasped it in her own. They meandered back through the front door, giggling to themselves about anything and everything that came to mind. Despite the water that weighed her down, Pearl thought that she had never felt lighter.
Puddles pooled behind them with every step they took. They would mop it up later, she reasoned. First, they had to dry themselves. Then they could move on to the floors.
They peeled off their soaked clothes and put them in a pile for Pearl to deal with while Gem ran a bath. She tossed them into the dryer and held down the button until it sputtered to life and the soggy fabric tumbled around inside.
Stretching her arms above her head, she wandered into the bathroom, smiling when she saw Gem already submerged in the water. She cracked her eyes open and waved Pearl forward, scootching further down so Pearl could slot herself behind her.
She settled into the warm water with a contented sigh and got to work untying Gem’s braids. She ran through the tangles with her fingers, gently pulling them apart while her wife hummed a tune under her breath. When she finished with the first braid, she moved onto the second, working the elastic out of it and undoing the intricate curls and coils from where they’d sat since yesterday.
When she finally finished, Gem reached her hands up to work through the knots in Pearl’s hair, dragging her head down until her forehead rested on the bare skin of her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around Gem’s torso, savouring the feeling of her fingers threading through her hair, her nails scratching against her scalp.
They sat together in the warm atmosphere until the water cooled off. Then, they dried off, raced to the bedroom—Gem won, of course, and Pearl only smiled—and changed into new pajamas. They settled into bed, Pearl with a book she’d been reading, Gem with her head on her chest.
Pearl breathed in the smell of their shampoo and realized with a smile that she had been wrong.
This was exactly how she wanted to spend their rare day off.