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softlysounded-irrevocablyangsted · 1 year

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Color Coded

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Garnet’s most recent reforming - the result of a simple accidental poofing during construction of homeworld’s most recent addition - features the standard star rendered this time in a vibrant, eye-catching pink.

The first time Steven sees it, he can't help but notice how closely it mirrors the color of his gem.

As time passes the interest should wane, but.. it doesn't. Steven keeps finding his eyes drifting to the new mark, tickling the edges of his mind with a soft sensation that only strengthens the longer he stares.

On the day he stares the longest, their relative positions to each other allowing his revelry to carry on unobserved and therefore uninterrupted, that feeling solidifies into more. It grows from hazy comfort to a soft pride, and he basks in the mysterious warmth it fills him with.

He likes it there, the way it bends with her shape and seems to shine against her dark colors, like a brand. His color, marking her form, a pledge of dedication, her will as his own. Claiming her as his. His gem and no one else’s-

The thought sinks its teeth into his softened, hazy mind and he jolts back, terrified, and swears to himself never to look at it again but before his mind can process the thought Garnet’s eyes are on him.

His spiraling freezes at the soft smile and knowing eyes she directs towards his own horrified expression, and he turns away, cheeks dusting with his own too-bright-to-be-human pink that melts the self-loathing from his face.

She resumes conversing with Pearl about the recent volleyball games as if she hadn’t just pledged herself to the diamond at Steven’s core.

— – -

Amethyst is next. No one knows what did her in this time, but no one is overly concerned when she struts in with the notable changes and natural glow of a recent reformation. Pearl does do a double take, though, at the bright pink she now wears as naturally as she would wear a cat’s form, or a ball’s. Amethyst never being one to do things by half, Seven’s thoughts grind to a halt as he gives a jaw-dropped stare at her entirely pink shirt, throwing her natural purples into sharp relief. Pink accents of varying shades weave through her short pants in that intentionally-careless looking way that characterizes her so completely. The tone claims her less like a brand and more like an integration, an assimilation and oh my god that’s so much worse. Just as she had since the moment she popped out of the ground without so much as an identity, she saw something she liked and she took it and she made it a part of her so tightly bound that the edges of who she was and who she has become could no longer be fathomed. And now she had done that same process with him. She had so casually, and so irrevocably taken him and made him part of her identity, and to go back would be to shatter.

— – -

It actually takes him a while to notice with his dad, the full-human causing that distant little alien part of Steven’s brain not to look for it, not to mention the obfuscating effects that the ever-changing nature of the human wardrobe can have. But, after just one too many days seeing the man wear pink in a row, he finally confronts his father about it.

"I'm just doing it until this is healed enough to be presentable."

He rolls up his sleeve and there on his left shoulder is a small tattoo of a pink star.

In the absence of hungering anticipation that he has begun to feel near the gems, the sudden surge of emotion at the mark overtakes him, and he clings to his father in a startled embrace.

He wouldn't have known what to say anyway.

— – -

Peridot and Lapis reform in a group of 'self-poof-ers', a modern trend brought on by the coincidence of little homeworld’s founding and the advent of painless poofing tech. Gems took it by storm, taking advantage of the opportunity both to explore the human concept of cosmetic beauty as well as to remake themselves for their new lives. Despite the… odd connotations the practice held in human culture, Steven was tentatively pleased with the progress it represented towards seeing their forms as an expression of themselves rather than tools of the diamonds. He had even recommended it, in a few extreme cases.

He had not, however, ever expected any of his family to partake in the fad, but based on the recent ‘pinkening’ of those closest to him he supposes he should have known.

Having reformed fairly recently before now, little has changed about the pair’s forms, beyond the subtle addition of his color somewhere; a pink ribbon belt for Lapis, a bright cuff added to Peridot's boot. He has stopped trying to hide the pleasure he finds in his family's slow transformation, and he allows himself to revel in the feeling openly, his joy spreading to Lapis and Peridot as he gushes over their additions.

— – -

Time passes.

Amethyst poofs and reforms again, the heavy-handed pink that had become a signature of her form continuing to cling to her appearance just like any other thing she had used to build herself since her emergence.

Garnet separates, a now common strategy in their infrequent but regular games of tag, and he is lost enough in the pink of Ruby's headband and Sapphire's waistline that he loses on the spot.

Pearl has not donned his color. This is no doubt at least in part by virtue of the fact that she is seldom poofed, particularly now that fighting monsters was no longer part of their daily routine. But still, Steven cannot help but wonder about it. A foreign-feeling anticipation has settled like a cloud over his mind, beginning from the soft haze he felt from that first moment Garnet reformed all that time ago and only growing into the rumbling thunder he feels when he looks at Pearl now.

Peridot and Lapis fuse for the first time. She shines with a thousand shades of sea green and one startling shade of pink that sets his heart fluttering in that by-now-familiar rhythm as he scoops up the nearest gem in excitement and Rainbow Quartz and Blue Prehnite soar through the sky together.

In his mind, the human part of it, anyway, he almost hopes she doesn’t - hopes that Pearl won't bend to the heady yearning weighing on his frame. More so than from any of the others, a primeval pledge of loyalty from Pearl, to Pink Diamond no less, seems wrong, and the guilt he feels at the rumbling disappointment that violates his gut more and more is almost enough to make him wish Garnet had never lit this burning, hungry joy in his chest at all.

Spinel visits, and he startles even himself at the petulant glare he sends the white, blue, and yellow diamonds displayed proudly on her chest.

...He spends the rest of his evening with the almost entirely pink gem assuring her, again, that he really doesn’t mind that she tried to kill him when they first met. That’s just kinda his life.

He almost accepts it - accepts that Pearl couldn't bear his mark for fear of making herself victim to her own interpretation of what it would mean. And he understood. And he was proud of her for the growth that it showed, and her freedom to refuse stood as its own mark of Rose Quartz on her, appeasing his hunger just enough that he could resign himself to ignoring it.

This is why, when he goes downstairs one morning with a yawn and tired eyes, he feels nothing but idle curiosity when he finds Pearl, back to him, fiddling with an object against her chest. The bottom stair creaks under his weight and she freezes. And he freezes. And they stand, frozen, until she whirls around and presents herself to him.

He has just enough time to lazily aim a confused gaze upon her entirely unchanged form and complete lack of reformation-afterglow before he notices. There, around her neck, rests a plain, human necklace, suspending a jewel over her chest.

The jewel's pale pink matches the color not of the Pink Diamond gem, but of his daily jacket. Its soft pastel compliments her natural tones, blending in a way he had never imagined the color could against her form, absorbing its tone as her own.

Their eyes meet and it is his, and it is hers, and it is theirs and not Pink Diamond's. And she wears it like an adornment and holds it like a secret, like a knowledge only fully understood by the two of them, dangled so delicately on the fragile chain that cradles it. And it is a choice, a decision made every moment to allow the gentle weight to remain around her neck.

Something must have shown on his face, as her steely look of a momentarily spurred determination melts and leaves a genuine, weary smile in its wake. Her look speaks of understanding, of tender care, of dedication, of a world-weariness, a life long suffered. And it speaks of a joy that through it all persisted, weathered but never broken.

His human mind and his gem core ring with a harmony he has not felt since this all began.

Her eyes say for you.

And his said for us.

And the hunger was sated.

#steven universe #su #fanfic #fanfiction #drabble

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softlysounded-irrevocablyangsted · 3 years

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Honestly, I’m really only interested in soulmate AUs with alternative plots.

I don’t really care about person A and person B who have each other’s names on their wrists and find each other and live happily ever after. I care about a culture where people don’t bother forming romantic relationships with anyone other than their soulmate, where they finally find their soulmate and realize they don’t know how to handle the ups and downs of a relationship.

I care about people who fall in love with someone who isn’t their soulmate and aren’t willing to leave.

I care about queer people who are outed by the names on their arms, about trans people who spend their whole lives worrying that their birth name will be on their soulmate’s arm, then sobbing in relief when it’s not.

I care about people in poly relationships and how that looks.

I care about asexual aromantic people who have a name anyway and wonder if they’re broken or if it’s the platonic soulmate they’ve always wanted.

I care about people who Google their soulmate and are disappointed by what they find. I care about the private detective agencies that rake in cash to help people find their soulmates. I care about the ways non-soulmate couples are discriminated against, from disapproving grandmas to insurance companies that won’t insure someone’s spouse unless they’re their soulmate. I care about teenagers who are devastated that their celebrity crush isn’t their soulmate and what happens when the media discovers a young, unknown person whose soulmate is hugely famous.

I care about the people who never meet their soulmates, whose soulmates died young, whose soulmates have another name on their arms.

I care about the ways that this is a broken system, how it fucks people up, how it doesn’t guarantee a happy ending and how people find their happy endings anyway.

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