Chapter Text
Eyes closed against the entrancing music created by her fluidly moving fingers, Garnet felt her full lips curl into a rare smile. The bass guitar cradled in her arms, being strung impeccably by her talented hands, emitted a haunting melody that enraptured the modest crowd gathering around the stage of the bar; she and Amethyst performed there every Thursday.
She and her closest friend of eleven years did what they could to afford their tiny one bedroom apartment in a neighborhood most wouldn't dare to enter on the southside of Chicago. This was one job that she looked forward to every week. Amethyst’s beautiful voice seamlessly traded for Garnet’s as the bassist transitioned into her original rap verse; the change caught the attention of anyone not paying it beforehand.
Her excellent lyricism and increasingly noticeable accent was near-impossible to ignore. The lulling sounds created between her bass and Amethyst’s drum set produced the perfect background to Garnet’s relaxed rapping. Effortlessly blending back into harmony with the drummer’s higher pitched voice, her signature alto complimented the melody excellently and the final notes rang out until the bar was nearly engulfed in silence. Suddenly, a burst of applause arose from the crowd gathered around the low-rise stage and a few enthusiastic whoops sounded from patrons further in the back. The duo played three more songs, all original like the first, before they began packing up their equipment and winding down for the night.
Garnet carefully placed her bass in its case and slung it over her left shoulder. Her concealed eyes did a cursory glance around the establishment and landed on a thin, lighter skinned woman making her way toward the stage with a determined glint in her gaunt, blue eyes. Garnet watched her approach with confusion blooming in her stomach. She gracefully stepped down from the stage with an ease created by her tall stature just as the lanky woman made it to the front. Upon closer inspection she was a few inches shorter than herself and under the influence of more than just alcohol. Her stylishly short, strawberry blonde dyed hair was cut close in the back and came to a longer, slick quiff in the front.
The stranger brought thin, bare hands up to perfect her already immaculate hair and cracked an arrogant grin at Garnet.
“You wanna get out of here?”
The taller woman quirked a curious eyebrow down at the slim woman in bafflement.
“Pardon?”
From the reddish tint in her gaze to the slight slur of her words, Garnet could deduce that the woman in front of her was both drunk and high, asking her to hook up.
It didn't feel right, no matter how distractingly attractive the shorter woman was.
“Take me home with you.” The stranger grinned dazedly, leaning forward and pressing her wiry fingers against Garnet’s muscular arms, seeming to marvel at her strength. With a hasty assessment of the situation, she concluded that this woman was clearly in no condition to be driving herself home. Perhaps she could distract her long enough that she could get Amethyst to steal her wallet and find out where she lived-
Too elaborate.
Maybe she could simply ask her-
The taller woman’s rapid-fire inner planning was killed mid-construction, as she was suddenly clutching the stranger’s body up for balance from where it had just very recently gone limp. In an act of pure instinct, Garnet yelled out to the only person in the world she trusted.
“Amethyst!”
The short, brown skinned girl whirled around from where she was conversing with the bar owner and sprinted in their direction from across the stage without a word of explanation to the confused woman she was speaking to. Amethyst skidded to a stop at the edge of the stage and hopped off, landing with a huff directly beside her bandmate.
“G, what the fuck did you do?”
Garnet’s hidden eyes widened just barely behind her visor-like sunglasses. Why did it have to be her fault?
“Nothing. She’s drunk and high, asked if I wanted to hook up and she collapsed. Probably had too much in her system and passed out.” She looked down at the woman, firmly unconscious in her arms, and then to her best friend with the smallest of shrugs.
“So...uh, what do we do with her? We probably shouldn't, like, leave her here. Right?” The shorter girl scratched behind her neck uncomfortably as she looked at the slumped woman. Garnet did a quick scan around the bar and, even with them in plain view, no one seemed to be there with the woman. With a brief sigh, she turned her gaze back onto Amethyst and quirked her lips in the barest hint of a smile.
“Well, I'm not drivin’ her home.”
The drummer rolled her eyes and held her hand out for the car keys. Garnet supported the dozing woman with one arm as she reached into the arm pocket of her leather bomber jacket and tossed the keys to her bandmate. The shorter girl gathered their equipment and stalked out of the establishment to go start the car. Garnet looked back down at the blonde and huffed, performing the slightly invasive task of patting her down for a wallet or some form of identification. The tall woman noted a small purse barely hanging on to her finger tips and grabbed it before it could fall to the dirt and alcohol stained floor.
Continuing to hold the paler woman with one arm, the bassist pawed through her purse, sighing in relief when she finally spotted a teal colored wallet. Leafing through it, she found an ID with an address on a street she absolutely did not recognize… in Michigan. Garnet sucked her teeth at the state and placed everything back where she found it; she then scooped the woman up into both of her arms bridal style. After placing the bag on the woman’s stomach, she followed Amethyst's path toward their now warm, beat down car.
Chicago’s winter wind whipped across her face and the night sky, having darkened as early as four in the afternoon, smothered the venue in an obsidian blanket.
The streetlights were out on the next street over, but the ones above made the unconscious woman look a sickly yellow color. Carefully inserting her to lay across the backseat and hoping that she didn't roll off during the drive, she shut the door and climbed into the passenger seat, having to scrunch her body just a bit due to her height and the less than comfortable amount of room in the vehicle. Amethyst looked over with an expectant, yet somehow still utterly bored, expression.
“Where to, boss lady?” The nickname made Garnet’s lips quirk upward as she leaned back into her seat.
“She lives in Michigan.”
Stopping mid reach for the gear shift, the shorter woman screwed her face up and looked toward Garnet with a look of disgust at the distance.
“I’m not driving to fucking Michigan to take this bitch home!” Rolling her eyes at her friend’s choice of words, Garnet remained serene.
“I didn't ask you to drive her there. I was stating where she lives. We’re taking her to ours. She can go home when she’s conscious and fit to drive.”
“Oh…” Amethyst deflated and pulled out of her parking space with a finesse that Garnet envied. Zipping down the side streets leading to the expressway left them in a momentary silence.
“So, were you gonna, y’know hook up with her? Or whatever? If she wasn’t, uh...” Amethyst’s question trailed off hesitantly. She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, but the question had been hounding her since Garnet mentioned the subject. The dark skinned woman sat in a silence extremely familiar to Amethyst, and the shorter girl awaited a response with a gentle coiling in her gut.
Eventually Garnet responded, “I think she's attractive, yeah?” She asked as if wanting the drummer’s opinion also. Her bandmate nodded slightly and Garnet continued with a noncommittal, “I dunno. Maybe.”
“Garnet…” Amethyst sighed, turning onto another side street to avoid traffic. The silence the shorter girl was greeted with wasn't her being ignored. She knew Garnet wasn't a woman of many words, but it didn't mean that it didn't really infuriate her sometimes.
“Are you fucking- you're joking, right?” The curly haired girl’s grip tightened on the steering wheel until the blood seemed to drain from her knuckles and leaned back in her seat until her head was pressed against the headrest. Her dark eyes, previously trained on the road, turned to Garnet briefly to attempt some sort of read on her closest friend. Failing, she turned her gaze back to the streets and clenched her jaw in frustration. The taller woman reached her long fingers up over her forehead until they rested embedded in her thick, kinky hair.
Leaning her elbow on the door, right at the base of the window, she allowed her palm to massage her forehead and sighed. She gazed through her glasses at the snow-coated ground outside. She never liked city snow. The slush was too abundant and the dirt made it all gray. It always seemed prettier in theory, never in practice.
“What am I doing wrong?” She questioned finally. Amethyst seemed to relax her grip on the wheel just slightly at the response.
“You're being insensitive… Or maybe I'm just selfish. I dunno, it's just- we've been this unofficial thing for years, G. Which is easily nothing compared to how much we've been through together, but still. You drop the L-word mid-fuck two days ago and you're still planning on hooking up with randoms from our gig?” Garnet let Amethyst's raspy voice settle in the car, otherwise silent save for the sound of the heat coming through the vents and the loud engine.
She struggled for an explanation, some sort of grasp on why her emotions didn't act like everyone else’s and why she doesn't even know if she knows how to love, let alone love someone as important to her as Amethyst.
Someone as passionate, beautiful, and honest as Amethyst. With a small groan she pulled her glasses off and squinted at the lights beaming from the other cars on the expressway. Using her other hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, Garnet hung her head in silent frustration.
“Ame, I-”
“Forget it, Garnet.” The shorter woman sighed and took one hand from the wheel to run through her dark mane of looser curls. The bassist turned her mismatched eyes to her best friend with a look of festering hurt and fear. Hurt at being pushed away, and fearful of her inadequacy ruining their friendship… relationship? She didn't even know what they were at this point.
“Amethyst, you know I care about you more than anyone else on this earth. Please- please just be patient with me.” Her voice weakened at the end, an action so abnormal that it made Amethyst turn to look at her for a brief moment before her eyes were back on the road.
“Yeah… Yeah, no I can do that. Just help me out here, and maybe ease up on the blatant flirting with other people. Please? It's... a lot.”
The darker skinned woman nodded from the passenger seat, relaxing now that their friendship wasn't in immediate peril. She slowly slid her glasses back onto her face and watched the cars speed past her window.
Carrying the unconscious woman in their backseat into their one bedroom apartment proved to be easier than anticipated, considering she was practically no weight in Garnet’s arms. The bassist laid her gently out on the couch and grabbed a duvet from the hallway closet to warmly wrap around her. Standing back and looking at her work, Amethyst entered with her usual goofy smile, showing no evidence of her distress just twenty minutes ago. Garnet turned to look at the shorter woman changed out of most of her clothes and on her way to the shower. A smile tugged at her full lips as she ran a quick, but hungry gaze over her half-naked body from behind her shades.
The Afro-Latina rolled her eyes playfully at the taller woman’s distracted silence and continued the short walk to their bathroom.
“You're making dinner tonight!” Amethyst yelled over her shoulder as she reached the end of the hallway.
“Ramen?”
“Hook it up, fam.” Came the shorter woman's reply from behind the closed bathroom door. Garnet shuffled into their small kitchen and began to prepare two bowls of the duo’s quickest meal. After inserting two packages of the noodles into a pot she had begun boiling, she finally allowed herself to think through the night’s most recent events. Why was she so incapable of understanding proper emotional responses from others and herself? It hadn't even occurred to her that Amethyst would have cared if she hooked up with a stranger after their gig.
No one was afraid of losing her; it didn't add up.
Without the lights on in the tiny room, she removed her glasses and set them gently on the counter. Her long arm easily reached the drawer where she pulled out a fork to stir the pot and break up the noodles with. No one had ever been keen on keeping her around. Maybe she should have known that her best friend wasn't going to cast her aside like so many had before.
Eleven years is a long friendship, one that Garnet had deluded herself into thinking was more so one of necessity and survival on Amethyst’s end than true desire to be around her. Sighing in frustration, she reached for the garlic powder and crushed red pepper from the cabinet of seasonings above her. Sprinkling both into the pot in a manner so practiced it was essentially mindless, she continued to ponder.
What if Amethyst was trying her out for something more personal in an effort to combat her loneliness?
The shorter woman had always had a harder time connecting with people who had not grown up in the system with them. People who didn't know what it was like to be with a foster family and miss a few meals because they weren't actually interested in protecting you, only a paycheck, being locked in a temporary bedroom from the outside with the windows glued shut because they always had trouble with kids running away, being on the cusp of adoption before, for whatever reason, a family decides they don't really want you.
Garnet’s free hand absentmindedly rose to run her fingers over the dented scar in the center of her forehead.
Having jealous children biological to the parents sabotage your adoption.
Shaking the thoughts from her head and letting her arm drop to her side, she internally scolded herself for derailing her thoughts of Amethyst back to her own issues. When the noodles were done, she turned the fire off with a quick, agitated movement and poured most of the water out into the sink. Placing two bowls from the drying rack onto the counter and helping an even amount of ramen into both of them, Garnet placed the pot back onto the stove and turned to grab the lemon juice from the refrigerator. She splashed a bit in both bowls and retrieved the cinnamon from the overhead cabinet to sprinkle over Amethyst’s. She never understood why the drummer liked it so much.
By the time she cleaned up the kitchen and brought the bowls out, with forks, to place on the tiny coffee table in front of their medium sized television, Amethyst was exiting the bathroom. The curly haired woman stopped in their shared bedroom for a moment and exited briefly after, wearing nothing but underwear and one of Garnet’s favorite pro-black activist t-shirts. She plopped down on the floor beside the taller woman due to the couch currently being occupied by their new guest. Immediately taking a fork to the dish, Amethyst moaned at the taste and at her hunger finally being sated.
“You're the only person I trust to make my ramen.” The shorter girl confessed around a mouthful of the noodles. They fell into an uneasy silence, carefree on Amethyst’s end and tense on Garnet's. After a stretched quiet, Amethyst tried again.
“Great show tonight, by the way. The crowd was really feeling your new song.” The curly haired girl grinned with a mouth full of noodles and nudged her taller friend, only to be met with stony silence filled by tense chewing and their guests’ light breathing. With an unbothered shrug, Amethyst continued to dive into her meal with all the joy of a well fed child. Garnet’s teeth grounded painfully together as she stopped raising her fork to her mouth all together. The shorter girl cut a wary glance in her direction and flinched back once Garnet snapped her head to look down at her with a sharp intake of breath that surprisingly was not followed by any words.
Amethyst held her gaze hesitantly, squinting her large eyes in confusion.
“Uh, G?”
“How are you not angry with me? Why are we sitting here acting like nothing is wrong when I've so obviously hurt you?” The darker woman fretted, her accent becoming thicker in her distress. A frown marred her forehead, otherwise clear aside from her scar. Without her glasses, Garnet’s mismatched gaze flickered between Amethyst’s sympathetic, dark eyes. The shorter girl reached her hand up to gently tug at the bassist’s kinky curls, an action almost guaranteed to relax her even just a bit, but only when Amethyst did it. The drummer moved from her cross-legged position to her knees in order to be more level with her best friend and roommate. Garnet’s eyes fluttered despondently when Amethyst’s hand moved to cup her angular jaw.
“When have I ever been pissed at you? Like seriously pissed off?” The shorter girl questioned with a patient, mature glint in her eyes that rarely materialized unless the situation was dire. Garnet’s gaze dropped to her tattooed palms, avoiding the curly haired girl’s loving brown eyes.
“Look at me.” Amethyst commanded softly, her raspy voice soothing the twisting ache in the taller girl’s stomach ever so slightly. Garnet’s earthy brown and pale blue eyes finally met Amethyst’s searching ones.
“Never.” Garnet mumbled guiltily, a pained look crossing her features. The shorter girl’s hand moved from her jaw to soothe the taut lines of a frown from the the singer’s forehead.
“Exactly. It's okay, Garnet. We're okay.”
The taller woman’s full lips pursed together for a moment as she continued to search the sincere gaze in front of her. Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it because in the next second she ducked in for a brief, gentle kiss to the shorter girl’s surprised lips. Before Amethyst could respond, Garnet had pulled back ever so slightly with a content curve to her lips and an unreadable glint in her mismatched eyes.
“ Thank you .” She whispered gratefully before turning back to her meal with a renewed glow and leaving Amethyst with burning cheeks and a wild fluttering in her gut.
“N-no problem, G. Heh.”
They ate in a more comfortable silence for the next few minutes until they both froze at the sound of quiet rustling behind them. Their gazes met for a split second before both of their heads whipped around to stare at their still very much unconscious guest. The visitor had rolled over to her stomach in her sleep and her face was now turned toward them, not quite full lips parted ever so slightly. Her back rose and fell in slumber and her eyeballs moved side to side dreamily behind her made-up eyelids. The unfamiliar woman’s arms were folded beneath her, parallel to her body, and the hand closest to the two tenants clenched into a sleepy fist beside her jaw.
“She is pretty.” Amethyst admitted quietly after a few moments of watching the light skinned woman get adjusted. Garnet’s full lips quirked upward in a knowing smirk as her elbow moved to nudge the shorter woman in the side. Her eyes began bothering her once more around the same time she finished her last bites. Glancing over and noting that Amethyst had finished her meal far before she did- she would never understand how the woman ate so quickly- she silently picked up both of their bowls and ambled the short distance to the kitchen.
Garnet flicked on the faucet and set the dishes beneath the water to rinse out stray bits of food and eventually placed them in the dish water for later. She was far too tired to wash them at the moment. Drying her hands on the towel beside the sink, she quickly placed her glasses back over her eyes and walked out, flicking off the light and going straight back to she and Amethyst’s shared bedroom.
As she stripped out of the day’s clothing, she heard light footsteps making their way down the short hallway. The door creaked open right as she was removing her halter top and Amethyst threw herself onto the bed with an oof . The bassist hadn’t worn bras since she and Amethyst had run away from their foster system. When one is on the run from sixteen until adulthood, bras aren’t entirely practical, nor are they comfortable. Finally stripping her underwear and entering full nudity, she sauntered to the adjoined bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Amethyst heard the water start up again and roughly scrubbed her hands over her face in a vain attempt to wash away the image of Garnet standing beneath the showerhead, curls falling lower and grazing her mid back with the weight of the water, the impending, enticing smell of mango scented soap and shea butter that always graced the room after she showered. She had known the woman since childhood, both entering the foster care system young, and she could attest to the fact that Garnet had always been breathtaking.
She met her when she was eight, Amethyst only being a year older than that, and she had the hugest mismatched eyes and most lovely dark skin. Her hair was perpetually in two massive puffballs and her kinky curls stretched down her back when Amethyst would play with it. The kid had the brightest smile and cried whenever she lost a tooth because she didn't trust that it would grow back at all, let alone stronger. Garnet was often the voice of reason that stopped Amethyst from getting into all the trouble she could have, and when they were placed in homes together with horrible foster parents, which seemed to be all of them, Garnet somehow kept her safe. She had always protected her, even to this day.
Amethyst found herself smiling when she heard the water cut off and the sound of a towel being wrung out. She didn’t expect Garnet out of the bathroom just yet though, she was waiting for the scent of shea butter to join the lovely smell of mango soap. Eventually the woman exited into the bedroom dried off, moisturized, and naked. Amethyst knew she wouldn’t mind her gaze, they had seen each other naked an innumerable amount of times, both platonically and sexually, but she still rolled over and pretended to be on the edge of sleep when she heard the bathroom knob turn.
She knew it would be a bit before the taller woman got into bed. Her ritual of detangling, coconut oil and a twist-out to prep her hair for the morning would take twenty minutes tops. When she was finished, Garnet slipped into the bed; the bassist had nothing on but a bonnett. Of course Amethyst was aware that she slept naked. She had done so since they had gotten the apartment, yet with the odd sexual tension between them both there was no way she could sleep now. The bedside lamp flickered off and they laid in silence.
There were so many things that she could say, so many things that she wanted to say… and no idea how to say any of them. This was one of the many times she wished Garnet were more vocal about her feelings. She knew her long enough to understand why she was often closed off, and Amethyst knew she was lucky for Garnet to open up to her as much as she already did, but there were things left unsaid that needed to be out in the open. Without recognizing she was doing so, Amethyst sighed once she realized most of the feelings being bottled up were from her own end.
“What’s wrong?” Garnet murmured from her right. The room was pitch black aside from the city lights filtering in through their closed blinds, but Amethyst could still make out the vague shape of Garnet’s profile once she turned to face the taller woman.
“Oh, you know… Just wondering how good an idea it is to leave a stranger alone in our house- Unconscious or not.” The lighter skinned girl joked, and she didn’t need the lights on to know that Garnet wasn’t buying her bullshit.
“While I understand your concern… I also know that’s not what’s really bothering you.” Amethyst heard the covers shift with Garnet’s body and soon the taller woman was propping herself up on an elbow to look at her best friend. The curly haired girl allowed yet another heavy sigh to exit between her dry lips and she rolled over to her back to glare up at the ceiling.
“We’ve been… We’ve been this
thing
for years now, this unspoken sort of
whatever
thing, and it’s almost casual, but then again I can’t even call it that because we’re too close for whatever
this
is to just be
casual
…” The Afro-Latina struggled to get her meaning across and could only hope that Garnet could follow where she was going with this.
“But for simplicity, let’s call it casual… I can’t do that- do
casual
. You’re my best friend, G. You’ve been there for me and I’ve been there for you our entire lives, so of course I love you… but love and being
in
love are very, very different things.”
Garnet could only watch Amethyst’s still silhouette in a panicked silence that seemed to clutch her entire body in its grip. Where was she going with this? Opening up was one of her weakest suits, but being opened up to at a level this deep, this real, was definitely at the top.
“And you- you don’t know how to love, Garnet. As much as you want to do right by the people you care about… you don’t love.”
An icy fist gripped in a tight vice around Garnet’s lungs as a sharp intake of breath seized her. Amethyst had taken her monologue in an entirely different direction than she anticipated. Finally blinking, she was stunned to hear tears jumping down to the sheets beside her bare elbow. She had these self-deprecating thoughts on her own for who knew how long, tearing herself apart over not knowing how to display her love appropriately to the few people on earth she cared about. And it wasn’t her fault that she was fucked up, that she was somehow incapable of loving the way she was supposed to, but saying that it didn’t kill her every time she was reminded of it would be a lie.
“I do- that is love. Wanting to do right by those you care for is love , or part of it.” Unfortunately, the desperate edge to her accented voice made it sound like she was trying to convince herself more than Amethyst. She wasn’t sure, and the shorter girl could hear it in her tone, but Garnet plowed on. “And of course I love you. I’ve stood by your side since we were kids, and I never let anything happen to you. Not once. When we were on the street, starving, and you dreamed of making honest money so we could provide for ourselves-”
“Garnet, stop-”
“And we came across those guys selling their old instruments who wanted nothing but-”
“ Garnet-”
“Who wanted nothing but a fuck , a piece of us each, what did I do?”
“I didn’t mean-”
“I said I’d fuck them both so you didn’t have to. So you’d be safe.”
The silence following her loud whispers pierced the air between them in a way that could have shattered glass. Amethyst’s eyes were screwed shut against the guilt that gripped her every time she remembered that night. The only sounds were Garnet’s watery breaths and Amethyst’s pounding heart.
“Don’t ever tell me I don’t love. Just because it’s not the way you want doesn’t mean it’s not more than you can imagine.” With that final icy statement, Garnet turned over and faced opposite the curly haired girl, tucking further into herself and sniffling once before falling silent. Amethyst stared at the back of her bonnett-covered head and let shame wash over her in waves.
She deserved that. She deserved every one of Garnet’s words