Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun is hot and that’s how Marina likes it. She likes to feel it like a lance, like it cuts through her body, down under her skin, through her muscles and her ink and her organs, likes to feel like she’s glowing and warmed from the inside out. It supercharges Pearl too, and she takes to the sun and the sand and the ocean like a kid, unhindered, feet bare, kicking sand as she runs after the volleyball, as she slides on her shins to hit the ball, as she jumps to spike and dashes to smack it back over the net, using her small size and speed to send it spinning in ways that Marina can’t predict. When the ball sails into the ocean, Pearl is the first to dart after it, and she dives into the water, hands pointed in perfect form. She used to be a diver, way back when, she told Marina once, as they laid under an umbrella and listened to the ocean after a long day just like this one, except that one was punctuated by surfing. Well, Marina surfing; Pearl fell off the board every time and swallowed way too much saltwater. Eventually, she just grabbed a kickboard and cheered Marina on from the shallows. That day ended with a nap under the umbrella and a long, exhausted drive home, where they went to separate rooms in Pearl’s large house and said a lingering goodnight.

Pearl used to be a diver, off the high-dive, flips and twists, and it came out in the strangest moments—those sturdy jumping legs, her strong, pointed swimming, the ease and control of her dancing. Marina watches Pearl slice through the water after the ball, whisked a bit too far into the surf because Marina hit it too hard, and is struck dumb again, the latest in a long string of dumbstruck, longing looks, and wonders what would have happened if Pearl had stuck with diving, if she hadn’t gotten it into her head to rebel, to chase other passions, to focus on music, to curse into the mic, to smash things. She wonders what would have happened if Pearl hadn’t willingly settled down for Marina, if she hadn’t completely revamped her image for Off the Hook or refused Marina’s halting requests for her to listen to her demo, if she hadn’t considered a future that was the two of them working together.

Beach volleyball is a simple sport when it’s just the two of them. They don’t so much follow the rules as just hit the ball back and forth, sending it spinning with all of their might. They’re evenly matched most days—Pearl’s speed and fierceness is equaled by Marina’s strength and determination. They send the ball spinning wildly through the air, spiking it, hitting it, slamming it, trying to outsmart each other, but it always comes down to one or two points at the end. Marina has no idea who has the most wins because it’s not important. What’s important is the meeting of their skills, how they challenge each other, how they get better together.

Today, Marina is in the lead, but Pearl is all gritted teeth and hard spikes. She wants to win, because she just lost a splatfest, and, when she sets her mind to something, she’s forceful with it. Sand sprays up under her feet as she rushes the ball, as she dives into the sand like she does into the water, and Marina finds herself far too distracted with the lines of Pearl’s body as she moves, graceful in her own way. Pearl is fast and strong and unstoppable, runs with a sprightliness that Marina, heavy from her time in the military, wishes she could replicate.

The ball sails far over Marina’s head, smacked there by Pearl’s combined fists, and she has no hope of reaching it before it hits the ground just inside bounds. Pearl cheers, jumps, throws her hands in the air as her legs splay out in a V. “Take that, Rina!” she cries, and points at the ball where it bounced to a stop right next to the line Pearl carved out thirty minutes ago. The net is a public good, but the boundaries are decided by the players, set up with mounds of sand, lines of beach toys, or, in this case, Pearl, hunched over with her tongue out, holding a large piece of driftwood, dragging it through the sand to create a deep furrow.

Marina pads toward the ball, sand clinging to her legs, and bends down from the waist to pick it up. When she stands, she turns back to Pearl, ball propped against her hip, and reaches up to tighten her ponytail with one hand. Pearl, for her part, is watching her with eyes squinted against the sun, but Marina easily recognizes the look in her eyes. It warms her from the inside, the opposite of the sun, and suddenly she desperately wants to push Pearl into the sand and kiss her right there. She’ll probably taste like the salty ocean and sand, but it’ll be worth it.

But, she has a game to win, and Marina is just as competitive as Pearl, so she’s not moving from this box until one of them reaches fifteen points. “Looking at something?” she calls as she squares her feet and weighs the balls in her hands.

Pearl’s tank top is drying and falling off one side, revealing her freckled shoulder, the thick strand of her bathing suit top, and her shorts cling to her legs, still soaked from the ocean. Marina can see all her curves, the bump of her hips, the slight angle of her shoulder. She has to resist the urge to lick her dry lips.

Pearl must see it though, the way her eyes are lingering, because she grins in return. “Are you?” she asks, and puts her hands on her hips, squaring off her chest. “Like what you see?”

Of course she does. Marina shakes her head and holds the ball up. “Let’s play.”

Pearl laughs, throws her head back with it, and then has to dive at the ball as Marina hits it toward her. She slides into the sand, misses the ball, but doesn’t get the chance to get up. Marina sprints under the net and slips next to her, sends up a spray of sand, grabs her face, and kisses her.

The ball rolls to a stop next to the furrow.

Chapter Text

They meet at a cafe just outside of the square. Pearl tried to dress discretely, which, for her, meant her pinkest, biggest hoodie, zipped up to the neck. Marina, for her part, isn’t trying to hide anymore, not after everything that happened, so she tugged on her favorite crop top and high waisted skinny jeans and here they are, Marina, the beanpole, and Pearl, her blob of a girlfriend.

“One hell of a curvy beanpole,” Pearl mutters as she holds tight to the wall of the train as it sways through a wide turn. Marina knocks her hip into Pearl’s side.

Three and Eight already have a table and are situated across from one another. There are two drinks on the table, neither touched, and Three is staring at her phone, clearly trying not to look at Eight, even as Eight glances around, taking everything in. Marina recognizes the expression from her own early days up here, especially the emotion there, and she can’t help but smile when she sees Eight’s eyes light up as she spies the zapfish flying past, jangling mechanically, and watches her watch it until it disappears back toward Deca Tower.

Pearl piles in next to Eight because Three makes her nervous—something about all those specials and the way she “went feral on Eight’s ass without warning”—which situates Marina as far away from Eight as she could be. She frowns but climbs into the booth next to Three, who greets her with a glance and a click of her phone’s lock button.

“How you spelunkers doing?” Pearl asks, trying to break the ice. Eight glances toward her, mouthing the word spelunkers to herself, and Marina mutters the Octarian translation toward her.

“Haha,” Three returns, looking right at Pearl, “because we were underground. I’m fine. Eight is doing great. She likes to touch everything.”

Eight nods and demonstrates by touching her cup and pulling her fingers away with the condensation. She rubs the water between the pads of her digits and grins at Marina.

It’s a simple thing, but Marina understands it. Condensation this thick isn’t that common in the domes—and absolutely no weather other than sun, sunny, sunny—because the giant orb-shaped lamps they use for light don’t produce enough heat, so to experience such a normal, everyday phenomena is privilege in and of itself.

“That’s good to hear.” Pearl leans back in her seat. “Hopefully she’s not like Marina. She almost fell off a bridge once because she wanted to see the bolts up close and personal.”

That makes Three laugh, which is good to see. Marina didn’t know Three before all this, but she’s been quiet, at least according to Callie and Marie, who were, needless to say, surprised when their grandfather and Three reappeared with three extra tagalongs. Three’s face was swollen and clearly badly burned from the goo, though it seems to be healing now, with a little extra help from a salve that Pearl’s personal doctor prescribed, but, a week ago, Callie and Marie were clearly worried about her, especially when she stalked off to lie down in Cuttlefish cabin without so much as a goodbye.

(When Marina explained what happened, how Three had been attacked, brainwashed, and forced to fight Eight, Callie tutted to herself and Marie nodded, gaze far away. Then, Pearl relayed that the only time they’d heard Three speak was right after she woke up, after it was all said and done, and she sat up, woozy, with one hand on the burned side of her face, and muttered, “Ah, what hit me?” Then, she pulled her hand away, and a long, stringy piece of goo came with it, and she scowled. “See, this is why I never answer the phone.” Pearl had laughed in the moment, from where she was sitting on the ground, having just recovered from Marina’s overzealous tackle, but, later, as she related it and saw Callie’s pinched expression and Marie’s frown, she seemed to realize that maybe there was something more to that, something that she wasn’t privy to.)

“Nothing like that,” Three is saying now. She’s not looking at Pearl anymore. Instead, she’s watching Eight as she unwraps her silverware and lays it all out in a straight line on her paper napkin. “She’s curious, but she’s also like... perceptive... It makes me uncomfortable. It’s like she can see through me.”

That makes Pearl laugh then, and Marina feels one of Pearl’s boots knock into her knee. “That’s normal... Octolings... They’re like that.” Pearl smiles at Marina, the small, tender one that she usually reserves for private, and Marina has to look away to keep herself from smiling wide in return. Somehow, Pearl still has the uncanny ability to fluster her, even one year into this whole relationship thing.

Three hums to herself and can’t seem to tear her eyes away from Eight. Marina recognizes that too—the fascination with watching Eight discover the world, which will probably evolve into something else, a few years from now, if they keep on like this. Marina sees Pearl in Three, the Pearl from way back when, the Pearl who just wanted a best friend, the Pearl who was desperate for success and for any sort of connection; it wasn’t until years later that that connection evolved into what it is today, but Marina can see the beginnings of it in Three, with her gently scarred face and her frown lines.

“It’s a great thing,” Pearl continues, and pushes her phone across the table toward Three. On it, there’s a picture from three years ago, when Marina had cropped hair and Pearl wore all black. They smiled at the camera, the city lights bright in the background, their faces rounder than they are now, with no idea of what would happen, of what they would become. “If she’s anything like Marina,” Pearl says, “then she’ll be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.”

Three stares at the picture for a second, then glances toward Eight, Eight in her bright green tank top with her gently curling hair, watching as the server moves through the tables with a large tray of plates held over her head. Three swallows visibly and doesn’t take her eyes off Eight.

Later, they walk Three and Eight home, to the place they share with Four. Three cajoles Pearl with stories of her missions, ignoring Pearl’s incredulous and disbelieving expression, and Marina walks close to Eight. It’s been three years since she’s seen another octoling, let alone been in such close proximity with one, and it’s nice, to feel this closeness again. For a moment, they walk in sync, and Marina realizes how much she missed it.

“How’s it been, being around Three and Four?” Marina asks in Octarian. She knows how overwhelming it is, forging into Inkopolis without anyone who can understand your language or comprehend just what you left behind—and Eight has it ten times worse than Marina ever did, because not only is she fresh out of the Canyon, she’s also fresh out of the metro, which was the freshest hell Marina could imagine for someone like a newly freed octoling.

“It’s been...” Eight sighs and casts a long glance at Three’s back. Three throws her hands up and jumps to simulate an explosion in her story, which sends Pearl into a peal of laughter. “It’s been fun. They told us so many horror stories about Inkopolis, so it’s been a game to try to figure out which of it was true and which was just inspired by something innocent.”

Marina chuckles. “Oh yeah, I remember doing that. Like the planes—I remember being told that they crashed more often than they landed.” Eight grins and nods, but doesn’t speak again, because Three glances back, probably to make sure that she’s still following, and that reminds Marina of something she wanted to ask.

“Three’s been nice to you, right?” She’d been a little nervous, leaving Eight in the care of Three and Four, no matter how much Callie and Marie vouched for them, because Three seemed so surly and grouchy and Four was a bundle of unstoppable energy.

But, Eight is sixteen, the same age Marina herself was when she clambered up to the surface, and she wanted to stay with Three. Marina thinks that, in the beginning, she felt guilty for Three’s brainwashing, no matter how brief, and blamed herself for it. After all, she knew exactly how terrible it was to lose your will, even if it was only for a few hours.

“Of course!” Eight is a bubbly person, non-stop happiness, even in the face of dire situations, and Marina thinks that that’s just how she gets through it, how she survived it all. Though, she’d called Marina a few times in the middle of the night, sobbing because of the shadows in her dreams and the shadows that manifested in her room, but before Marina could properly talk her through them, Three’s voice appeared in the background, as if summoned, and Marina always hung up feeling a bit windswept by it all. Pearl, meanwhile, grumbled at her from the sheets to please lie back down because she was cold.

“Three is... She’s funny, and patient. She’s great at explaining. I’m picking up the language quickly!” Eight looks pleased with herself, and Marina feels herself swell with pride. It’s so nice to see another octoling adjusting to life here without a hitch. It gives her hope for the future.

Eight’s found her Pearl, the inkling that will stick by her in this unfamiliar world, and she’s a little stubborn and a lot curious. Three and Eight aren’t Pearl and Marina, but Marina can’t help but see herself there, even as Eight smiles to herself in a way that Marina couldn’t until at least a few months into her time here. Eight is a natural at this, more adaptive than Marina, and more at ease around Three than Marina was around Pearl. She’ll be fine.

Three glances back again, sees Marina’s expression, clearly reads it for it is, and bites her lip. She doesn’t say anything, just holds Marina’s gaze for a second, and then looks back to Pearl, who’s now telling a story about the time Marina tried to climb Deca Tower.

“They’re different from the stories,” Eight says, once the small exchange is done. She gazes at Three’s back with a furrowed brow. “I don’t understand her all the time. It’s nice.”

Ahead of them, Pearl stomps her feet, simulating how Marina pouted when Pearl pulled her away from the tower. She remembers that day, how she just wanted to see the city, how she was fascinated with the newly finished tower, and how, most of all, she just wanted Pearl to pay attention to her. Back then, she wanted someone to see her, because, in Octo Valley, no one ever did. It took Pearl a while, but eventually she got it, and she gladly gave Marina all the attention she needed.

“Yeah,” Marina replies. “They are.”

Chapter Text

Pearl meets Marina in early May. After a mishap with a tennis ball (fetch, with Marie’s dog), Pearl steps up on a chair to look over the wooden fence and sees a tall, lean woman, dressed in a white, long sleeved shirt and linen pants, bending over a stack of pine boxes.

There are at least two hundred bees buzzing around her large, white, netted hat.

The woman pries a rectangular piece free from the inside of the box and holds up what seems to be a rack of honeycomb, stuffed full of dark, liquidy honey. Pearl stills for a few seconds, unable to tear her eyes away, and hears a low, melodic voice mumble about nectar, eggs, and brood.

She replaces the rack and moves to pry another one free. Pearl, now distracted, forgets the ball, and the eager dog bouncing around her knees, and instead leans on the fence, hands grasping the rounded tops of each picket. The woman moves gracefully, prying each rack free, and Pearl hears her exclaim something about a queen. She holds the frame up close to her face, and blows on the bees swarming its surface, then nods to herself. “Good job queenie,” she says, right to the bees. “That’s a perfect brood pattern.”

She replaces the piece and then begins to reassemble the hive, hoisting one box on top of the other, until it’s almost taller than she is. After depositing the top lid, she pats the box, wishes them a good honey and brood season, promises to check again in a week or two, and turns away.

She sees Pearl then, still leaning on the fence, standing on one of the metal chairs that Marie kept stacked against the house for company, and pushes her beekeeper’s hat off her head. “Hello...?” she calls, uncertain.

“Uhhh,” Pearl stutters, because this woman is absolutely breathtaking in a way that she can’t articulate. Smooth skin, strong shoulders, sharp, angular face, sure, but there’s something about her expression and her eyes, the energy behind them, that has her taken for a second.

Get it together, Pearl.

She points a shaky finger at the ball, lying innocently in the grass where it landed fifteen minutes ago. The dog has since lost interest and is lying in the sun across the yard from Pearl.

“Oh,” the woman says, and then laughs to herself. She grabs it up and walks toward Pearl, deposits it in her hand without touching her, and swipes the back of her hand against her forehead to rid herself of sweat. “Sorry about that. I get so distracted sometimes.”

“You keep bees?” Pearl asks, as if it isn’t obvious. She wants to kick herself.

“You noticed, huh?” The woman pushes the sleeves of her shirt up, revealing dark, freckled skin. “Yeah. Are you Marie’s dog sitter for the summer? The bees won’t bother you. I just found a new mated queen so they’re calming down and are shifting into production now.”

Pearl has no idea what she’s talking about, but she doesn’t care. She’s enthralled by all this, by this tall woman and the bees that dance around her like small fairies. “That’s... I wasn’t worried. I mean— Marie didn’t mention you.”

The woman laughs again. It’s low and melodic, just like her voice, and Pearl thinks to herself that she must have a rich alto and a strong, developed soprano, if her speaking voice sounds like this. “She wouldn’t. We don’t talk much. She doesn’t like bees so she avoids me most days.”

Pearl knew that, somewhere in the back of her brain, in the part that’s not completely smitten. “That’s too bad. You’re...” She can’t find a word that doesn’t sound exhaustingly sugary sweet and won’t give her away as a gob smacked fool. She struggles for a second, pauses for way too long, until she manages to come up with: “You’re cool. You seem cool.”

The woman stills then, seems to finally take Pearl in over the fence, and her smile shrinks from a large, fake, neighborly one to one that’s smaller, more personal. “Thank you. I— I hope I see you around.”

“Me too,” Pearl says quickly. “I’m Pearl. I, uh... I’m here until the end of August so... Plenty of opportunity.”

“Nice to meet you, Pearl. I’m Marina. I should probably get going... Don’t want to agitate the bees anymore. Tell the pup I said hello.”

Pearl glances back at the dog, still asleep. “You got it.”

Marina has three hives, each of varying size. Her first hive is small because it just swarmed—which has something to do with healthy bees and reproduction—and the second one started out as a nuke, “a nucleus colony,” Marina explains from the other side of the fence, a hive that’s meant to help feed the other two. The third is a split of the first from last season, an attempt to keep it from swarming that failed. The third is the biggest and healthiest colony, which is making Marina nervous. “Swarming is when the queen lays a new queen and leaves with half of the bees to start a new colony. The new queen then has to hatch and go on a mating flight before she can lay more eggs, so honey production slows down... I want to avoid that for now,” Marina explains, carefully removing one hive body after another to get to the bottom of the hive, what she calls the brood boxes—where the baby bees are developing in the comb.

Pearl finds herself fascinated with all of this, despite her discomfort around the flying insects. Anytime a bee swoops too close to her head, she tries not to squeal, usually fails, and jumps off her chair. She only returns once Marina stops laughing.

Marina advises her to wear white if she’s going to watch, because bees only attack dark shapes, and even offers to lend Pearl her extra bee veil—the official name for the fancy, mesh hats—but Pearl doesn’t want to seem like that much of a wuss, so she refuses it. Instead, she just grits her teeth and watches for a dancing bee that gets too close, dressed in her whitest shirt.

However, the second time they happen upon each other, it’s not because of bees. Instead, Pearl is cooking some chicken on Marie’s gas grill and humming along to some early 2000s punk pop. Pearl isn’t sure whether it’s the smell of the food or the sound of the music that draws Marina in, but she pokes her head over the fence and leans on the pickets, watching Pearl quietly as she flips the skewers.

“So, what’s up with you?” Marina asks later, after Pearl invites her over and she hops the fence. They eat with paper plates balanced on their knees, and Marina struggles with the corn on the cob because of all the butter.

“What’s what with me?” Pearl returns, tearing chicken from the skewer with her teeth.

“All this.” Marina gestures around them, to the house and the yard and the dog. “No one runs to the suburbs for the summer unless they’re trying to get away from something.”

Pearl swallows before answering, carefully taking her time. “I’m trying to get away from my dad,” she answers, shrugging. “He’s stifling. I need to focus on my music.”

Marina nods. “He want you to get a job or something?”

Pearl grimaces. “Or something... I just need room to spread out, y’know?”

Marina looks down at her plate for a few seconds and then casts a long, thoughtful look at her yard. “Yeah, I get it... You’re like my bees.”

Pearl doesn’t know why, but she’s flattered by that.

In the middle of June, Pearl places her chair against the fence and clambers up. Her hair is pulled back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of her neck and she’s wearing a light pink baseball cap—the closest she has to white—with a small golden crown embroidered on the brim. Marina is elbow deep in her hives, as evidenced by the floating, bouncing shapes hovering around. There’s a droning sound from deep in the hive, and Pearl thinks Marina called that roaring once.

Marina is holding the racks up, checking for eggs and signs of the queen like she always does, but Pearl notices a few racks set to the side. They’re a light amber color, not quite the color of honey.

“You know, I’ve been wondering if you’re gonna give me some honey,” Pearl calls, and leans her elbow on the top of the fence. She grins, as droll as she can manage. In her chest, her heart rattles her ribs.

Marina heaves a hive body up and slides it carefully back on top of the hive. It’s the third and biggest hive, the one closest to the fence, the problem child with its flighty, swarm-happy queen. Marina’s barely kept it under control. “That’s nectar,” Marina answers, heaving from the exertion. Bees are heavy, she told Pearl a few weeks ago, as she held up a rack full of what she called capped honey that was crawling with at least a hundred bees; it took both hands. “Not quite honey. I’m gonna extract it because this hive is getting honey-bound.”

Pearl doesn’t know what honey-bound means, but she can put it together. Too much honey or nectar or whatever, no room for the queen to lay eggs. “Can you eat nectar?”

Marina scowls. “I’m saving this for later in the season. July doesn’t have as many plants, so I’ll feed the nectar back to them when they need it.”

“Smart. So... About that honey... What do I need to do to get some of that sweetness?”

Marina looks up then, sees Pearl’s coy smile, and looks down, biting at the inside of her lip. “Hmm,” she considers, looking back at her hives, “I guess you’ll have to figure that out, won’t you.”

It’s Pearl’s turn to look away because she can feel the blush on her cheeks. Get it together, Pearl. “I’m up for a challenge.” She squares her shoulders and leans as far over the fence as she can, pointing right at Marina. “You tell those ladies to get busy, because I love honey and I’m gonna get some, if it’s the last thing I do!”

As far as Pearl knows, Marina works from home as a programmer. She also volunteers at the local pool, gives swimming lessons to the kids on the weekends, and crochets in the evenings, sitting in her lawn chair with a ball of yarn. A scarf spins out from her hook, followed by a hat, mittens, and a large blanket. The blanket takes the longest because she’s making it complicated, with different colors, and Pearl watches her from the fence with something like yearning in her chest.

Marina is as enchanting as her bees. There’s something magical about the way she juggles everything, the way she’s committed to creating tangible things like scarves and socks and bags, while also guiding living things like the children at the pool or the bees in her yard. Pearl, for her part, finds herself lost. This summer was supposed to be a retreat of sorts, a time when she would lock herself in Marie’s house and write, compose, put her nose to the grindstone and force music to fall out, because come autumn she’ll need to prove herself. She was supposed to be afloat this summer, desensitized to the outside world, so she could focus.

But, instead, she finds herself clambering up on the chair and leaning over the fence almost every day so she can talk to Marina. Every evening they talk like that, with the fence between them, while Marina dips into her hives or crochets or stands right across from Pearl, tossing a baseball back and forth. They haven’t ventured into each other’s yards since that one impromptu dinner, but that doesn’t matter. Instead, Marina spins honey from the frames and scarves from yarn, and Pearl watches. Pearl doesn’t create anything of merit.

The hives are producing normally now, all drama done as they right themselves with their new queens, so Marina merely hums to herself about eggs and brood. Sometimes, she brings a frame toward the fence to show Pearl something, like the freshly capped honey, sticky and shiny amber in the comb, which is ready for harvest. “I’ll leave it though,” Marina says as she steps away to slide the frame back in place. “They need it to eat.”

Every time she does this, Pearl wonders after her jar, finds herself promising Marina honey toast, “with cinnamon,” Marina tacks on. She loves cinnamon.

For now though, there’s not enough honey to collect, and they’re about to enter a period of dearth, where there won’t be enough flowers come July and the bees will need to sustain themselves on their stores or Marina will have to feed them syrup.

Pearl is beginning to understand what Marina meant when she said Pearl was like her bees. She begins to wonder if she’s been in a period of dearth, feeding on an intangible syrup composed of her fascination with Marina.

She thinks that she might be falling in love.

One evening in July, Marina heads out to her hives. She calls for Pearl over the fence, a normal ritual, and Pearl, sitting on the patio with her smallest keyboard, makes her way over like always. The chair is set in now, hasn’t been moved in over a month, and Pearl steps up with familiarity and strength. Her music is coming slowly, finally, as if acknowledging her feelings for Marina was what she needed, and she finally has a song fully composed, lyrics set, chord progression complete. It feels good to be productive again, even if it’s slow.

Marina is standing next to the fence with her veil hanging around her neck when Pearl’s head pops over, and she’s watching the hives with squared shoulders and a wide stance, as if bracing for some unhappy truth. “Does that look like a lot of activity to you?” She points at the third hive, the one closest to the fence, and Pearl squints and leans, trying to spy the bees at the entrance. Marina watches the activity of the entrances closely, watching for orientation flights for bees that have moved beyond nursing and into foraging, and for the coming and going of the foragers. She can easily spot bees with pollen on their legs, successful returns, and she points them out as they dance for the others, telling them where to find the newest pollen score. Pearl doesn’t fully understand it, but she appreciates Marina’s expertise and careful, watchful eye.

Today, there’s not a lot going on at the hive entrance. Even Pearl can tell. “No,” she answers, and winces as she does, because she has a feeling this is a bad thing.

Marina sighs, which is confirmation enough, and tugs at the veil around her neck. “I thought so. Pearl...” She turns to her then, and places her hand over Pearl’s where it’s grabbing the fence. “I need your help.”

There’s a zing through Pearl’s whole body, and, before she can think, she straightens up. “What do you need?”

“I have a spare jacket. I need your eyes. We need to find the queen.”

Before she can stop herself, Pearl nods and jumps over the fence. There aren’t many bees in the yard, so she doesn’t have to worry about any swooping at her head, thankfully, and she follows Marina to her garage, where Marina outfits her in a white beekeeper’s jacket, cinches it at the waist, pushes gloves into Pearl’s hands, and then pulls the sleeves closed around those too.

“How do you feel?” Marina asks, bending down to check Pearl’s pants. Luckily, she’s wearing white jeans today, the last pair in a long line, the result of a laundry procrastination, and Marina seems pleased. She pokes at Pearl’s sneakers, decides they’re not enough, and disappears in the house. When she returns, she’s carrying a pair of dark red rubber boots, which she tosses down at Pearl’s feet.

“Shove your pants in. If there’s too much of a gap, we can tape them shut.”

Pearl does as she’s told, but she can’t help but watch Marina as she paces around. She’s clearly worried about her bees, but it occurs to Pearl then that Marina is outfitting her for war while she herself is barely wearing any protection. Marina usually never wears the typical beekeeping stuff when she’s diving into the hives—just a sheer, white, long-sleeved blouse, unbuttoned on top of her street clothes, her veil, and cream cargo pants, which she stuffs into green rubber boots. She never wears gloves or this thick jacket.

“I feel like this is overkill.” Pearl gestures to Marina in her minimal bee-proofing, already feeling hot and sweaty in the thick material.

Marina chuckles, which makes her shoulders relax a little. It pleases Pearl to see. “Gloves make it harder to handle the frames,” Marina says as she tugs at the jacket to check it one last time. “Plus...” She grabs the helmet between both hands to straighten it, and for a second Pearl can almost imagine that she’s grasping her face instead. It’s incredibly intimate, and Pearl can feel her face heating up. “Plus, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Marina pats the side of the helmet and runs her hands down Pearl’s shoulders, arms, and stops at her hands. She squeezes them tight between her own. “Thank you for doing this. I know you don’t like when they fly too close, so I really appreciate this.”

Pearl can’t stop the dopey smile that climbs its way onto her face, so she doesn’t bother. “You owe me two jars of honey now.”

Marina smiles in return. It’s not nearly as dopey, but it is a little fond. “Don’t worry. You’ll get all the honey you deserve.”

The queen is harder to find than Pearl anticipated. As Marina puffs the bees with smoke, she tells Pearl that the queen will have a giant green dot on her back, but, as they search the boxes, Pearl only sees the amber honey and the black and yellow bees. They’re squirmy and it’s a lot like searching for a single bread crumb in a pile of ants, but Pearl leans close, fearless, regardless. Marina holds the racks up so they can both see, careful not to jostle the bees too much as they go. A few fly close to their heads, but Pearl doesn’t flinch, even as loud buzzes startle her. Eventually, she gets used to it.

The first two boxes on top of the hive are for honey, with a plastic, holey barrier between the second and third “to keep the queen to the lower boxes,” Marina explains as she leverages the upper boxes up and off, not bothering to check them. The slots in the barrier are small enough to keep the queen out but big enough for the workers to get through.

The bottom three hive bodies are all for brood, which is where the queen should be spending her time. Her job is lay eggs and not do much else, so Marina expects to find her on one of these frames. But, they get through the first box, with its empty, spun comb, waiting for eggs, and then the second, with over half of its space taken up by capped honey, with no sign of royalty.

Marina despairs as they look into the bottom box. She’s worried that the queen swarmed again, even in this time of dearth, because the second brood box is honey-bound and the first is empty, with no sign of freshly laid eggs. Pearl, for her part, can’t reassure her because she doesn’t understand the specifics of beekeeping, not really, even over a month into watching Marina and listening to Marina and looking stuff up when she’s procrastinating on her music. Instead, she just bites her lip and leans closer to the frames as Marina holds them up to the sun, trying to spy the green dot or even the giant body of the queen.

Eventually, it’s Pearl who finds her. The dot is gone, rubbed off by all the activity, the bees that climb over their queen as they work on food and brood and comb, but Pearl sees a bee that’s almost twice the size of the others, and she leans close, holding her breath. It has golden legs, like Marina described, and she holds out a shaky finger.

“Is that her?” she asks, breath hot in the helmet. Marina’s eyes widen as she follows the trajectory of Pearl’s point, and she pulls the frame close, stares down at the queen, and breathes out slowly.

“There you are queenie... Don’t scare me like that.”

Marina captures the queen in a little cage and rests it on top of the hive, where the attendants climb all over it, and asks Pearl to back up. Then, she shakes all of the frames to rid them of bees, one at a time, so she can check for signs of swarming, and tuts to herself. She scrapes a few pieces of comb off the bottom of a few frames and pulls a few racks of honey out, to be replaced with empty ones from the top few boxes, does the swaps, and pulls the queen from the cage. Pearl from her vantage point a few feet away—clear from the angry, shaken bees—sees her pluck the large bee up by the wings and carefully dollop a paint drop on her back. “There,” she mutters, and releases the bee back into the hive, where she’s immediately surrounded by attendants.

After Marina’s replaced the bottom three boxes, she quickly checks the top few, and finds them mostly empty. She grimaces at this, but seals it up anyway, and, after placing the top of the hive back where it belongs, she carries three frames toward Pearl, veil pushed back. The bees dance around her, but don’t bother her, and Pearl feels fidgety in her thick jacket and helmet. Her clothes have become a sauna in the July heat, and she can feel sweat pooling on her neck and back.

“Mission accomplished?” Pearl asks as Marina heaves the frames with both hands. Honey is heavy, Pearl remembers her saying once, so she surges forward to take at least one.

“For now.” Marina sounds grim. “They want to swarm. I don’t understand it... There’s no pollen out there right now, but they must feel cramped... But the top box is empty...”

Pearl looks down at the honey. It’s capped with wax, which makes it extra heavy, and she sighs, at a loss. “Maybe that means they don’t need it?” She barely knows anything about bees, but it’s the only thing she can think of. “Is that a thing? Too much space?”

Marina stops. Pearl almost plows into her back, almost splatters honey all over her white shirt, but recovers quickly. “Mar?”

“I think... I think that’s it. There’s too much space... Not enough bees... They don’t feel cramped... They feel like there’s not enough pollen here because they can’t fill all of the frames. Pearl! You’re a genius!”

Pearl preens and follows quickly as Marina sets off to her garage.

Later, after the honey has been extracted and funneled into jars, the frames rearranged, Pearl relieved of her beekeeping gear, and the top hive body removed, Pearl sits in the grass in Marina’s yard, watching as Marina locates the queen one last time before sealing the whole thing back up. When she’s done, she disappears into the garage again and returns without her veil. She changed into shorts too, and her legs are strong and long; Pearl has to force herself not to stare.

Marina falls down into the grass next to her. “Thank you,” she says, staring up at the darkening sky. The days are long now, so it must be past eight at least. “I don’t think the hive would’ve survived if they swarmed. Their numbers are already so low...”

Pearl picks at the grass, pulling it up one strand at a time. “I mean, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. It was just a lucky guess.”

“Still... I owe you.”

Pearl grins at her. “Yeah, you do. I’ll take three jars of honey now.”

“Three?”

“One for finding the queen, one for being a genius, and one because you promised me.”

Marina rolls her eyes and leans back on her arms. “Better idea: here’s one.” She rolls a jar through the grass and it comes to a stop after bumping into Pearl’s leg. It’s sticky around the neck, where the jar overflowed under the screw lid. The viscous honey glops off the rounded sides inside the jar and Pearl can see herself in its reflection. “You’ll get another at the end of August.”

Pearl looks up from the jar and spies a coy smile on Marina’s face. She’s watching Pearl now, and Pearl sees her eyes track down, taking her in completely in her sweaty, spent state. The bees are quiet now, sated with their queen safe and their hive sealed up, and one crawls through the grass near the jar of honey, seeking out the sweetness.

“That’s only two,” Pearl says, knowing a game when she sees one. The bee climbs onto the jar. “You’re missing one.”

Marina makes a show of putting her hand on her chin to think. “Well, I guess you’ll have to take a different form of payment then, because I can only spare two.”

The bee crawls across the glass. Pearl leans toward Marina. “And what would that be?”

Marina mirrors Pearl’s lean. They’re close enough now that Pearl can feel Marina’s breath hot against her skin. It’s the second time today she’s had breath blown back into her face, but this time is ten times more pleasant and she finds herself inclining even further, until their noses are almost touching.

Marina is staring at her, trying to gauge her expression this close, and she carefully puts her hand on Pearl’s face. “I think you know what it is... Can I?”

Pearl smiles then, and that’s all the permission that Marina needs.

They kiss, and the bee reaches the sticky honey on the outside of the jar.

Chapter Text

The storm rolls in quickly but it’s not unexpected. The weather report had been predicting its path for over a week now, watching as it developed and grew, gained levels like years until suddenly it was old enough to have a name. They were instructed to hunker down and ride it out, prepare with non-perishable food and jugs of water. Pearl bought a generator, which they can’t really run in this apartment without risk of suffocating themselves on the exhaust. Marina also bought a generator, but hers is hand crank, good enough to charge their phones and to run the radio. They have a camp stove, which they can only use out on the balcony for the same reasons as the generator, but at least it’s something. They aren’t going to be eating cold beans if things go totally wrong.

This is Marina’s third typhoon season in Inkopolis, so she’s used to this. In fact, she finds it fascinating, the way the city shutters, the way people scurry to their homes and don’t reappear until the sun does. When they eventually emerge, it’s with wide, blinking eyes, as if seeing the world anew, and they all remind her of herself, way back on Mt. Nantai, when the sun was too bright and the sky too blue.

Their apartment is safe, built to code, with double pane, reinforced windows and doors that swing outward. There’s no danger in riding out the storm here, except that they’re high in the air, which makes the gusts seem stronger and louder, even if they aren’t. And the only time they hear the rain is when it sheets in sideways because there’s people above them. But Marina isn’t worried, not really.

Pearl on the other hand...

Storms make Pearl jumpy. She blames it on her father’s home, where her room faced a giant, old tree, planted far too close to her window, and how it would bend toward her, limbs reaching toward her in the dark, how she would sit up in bed, sheets clutched close, and watched, waited for the snap, waited for the sound of breaking glass, waited for the sting of rain and the whirl of the wind.

It never happened, but that fear never left her, and now she spends the big storms pacing around, checking the windows, running her hand along the wall as if she could sense it failing, going over the supplies, over and over, taking stock of the canned food, the blankets, the flashlights, the water jugs and the water that she ran in the tub, just in case. She counts the iodine pellets, lines up the water filters, smells the medical alcohol as if checking it like soured milk.

And, she watches Marina. Watches her sit on the couch, staring at the weather report, watches her cook dinner when the first drops hit the ground, watches her across the table as they chomp on sandwiches and potato chips, watches her like if she doesn’t, Marina would disappear into the rain and never return.

Marina knows Pearl, knows her incredibly, all the way to pit of her stomach and back out again, but in this she can’t quite understand what’s going on in that brain of hers. She can’t understand this anxiety or this obsessive worry, but she does do what she can to lessen it. She likes to watch the rain, but she stays back from the balcony doors and the windows, watches from the couch or the bed, sits still so that Pearl can curl up against her, and listens to the rain pelt the glass. The wind is loud too, but if Marina focuses, she can just hear the droplets as they complete their long journey from the ocean, as they finally land, right there against the window. It relaxes her, even as it makes Pearl tense.

Thunder and lightning are normal too, and they make Pearl curse under her breath. She stares out the window, sullen, watching for each offending flash so she can be prepared for the following cymbal crash. As the rain starts though, there’s less time to prepare, as the zap comes in tandem with the smash of noise. That’s when Pearl retreats within herself.

Marina likes the stormy summer skies. There’s something beautiful about all the gray, all that roiling, angry energy, how the light from the sun barely manages to sneak its photons through the solid clouds, how, for a bit, the world seems to get smaller as the sky lowers.

Marina never saw a non-blue sky until she clambered her way out of the valley and followed Pearl into the city. Her whole life, the world was blue, blue, blue. The gray is new and exciting, even now, even as Pearl falls onto the couch next to her and leans against her shoulder, shuddering as the sky does, headphones tight over her ears to block out the wind. Marina throws her arm over Pearl’s shoulder and ignores the staticky television in favor for watching the clouds.

“I got you,” she mutters, even though Pearl can’t hear her.

It’s rare to see her this vulnerable; usually she’d be up in arms, ready to fight whatever was making her uncomfortable. But, not even Pearl Houzuki can fight the weather.

“You got me,” Pearl mumbles back, face turning to press into Marina’s side. “It’s cute, y’know. How your face lights up when the sky gets all stormy.”

Marina chuckles and glances toward the window. The sky is roiling, boiling, moving with electric life. It reminds her that things aren’t always orderly, aren’t always perfect, and that brings her peace. After a life underground, where every need was tended to and she was controlled with military exactness, Marina needs this.

She just hates that it makes Pearl so anxious.

Marina pulls Pearl close to her. “It’s nice, because of the chaos. We didn’t have weather like this in the valley, but you’re all the chaos I need.”

Pearl pulls her head out a little so she can send Marina a bemused, bewildered look. Then, it morphs to a smile. “That was so cheesy...” She groans and pokes Marina in the side. “Don’t ever say that again. I might die.”

Marina laughs and swats her hand away, happy to see her loosening up again. Thunder will come eventually, and it’ll make Pearl clam back up, but, for a second, she’s relaxed and jokey, and that’s that relaxation they both need.

“It’s true,” Marina says, and pulls her close again, ready for the next boom. The wind whirls a little too loud and Pearl stiffens. “I never know what you’re gonna do next.”

Pearl shakes her head and her arms wrap around Marina’s neck. Carefully, she clambers into Marina’s lap and presses her face into Marina’s shoulder. “Me either,” she mutters. “And that’s fine, because I can usually tell how people are gonna react to whatever I do. But storms...?”

She doesn’t have to say anymore. Marina rubs her hand up and down Pearl’s back.

Thunder rattles the windows and Pearl stiffens, grits her teeth so suddenly that Marina feels it against her shirt. “I got you,” Marina mumbles again.