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Walking into the house after Ruby and Aquamarine felt a little awkward. After his dad had left, he had expected the gems to come over and apologise to him for the unnecessary harm they caused him, but they just walked back up to the house leaving him to trail after. He paused in the doorway and the uneasy pressure built in him until Garnet opened her door to the temple.
“I…I um…I just thought you guys would apologise.” Not the best opening but the gems turned to face him. Garnet’s door closing as she turned from it.
“Is something wrong Steven?” Pearl questioned. Her face soft with concern, the other almost mirroring her in their own unique way across the room.
He swallowed thickly before repeating, “I just…I thought you guys would apologise for not trusting me.”
Pearl’s concerned face turned to shock before settling on mild irritated confusion, “What? Steven, of course, we trust you.”
Amethyst joined in beside her, “Yeah what made you think we didn’t trust you, dude?”
He couldn’t help the hurt shock that crossed his face at the statements, “But you- you all disregarded my worries about Bluebird!”
“Steven,” Garnet started, “Ruby and Aquamarine were their own gems, we had no idea that Bluebird would try to hurt you.”
“No ide- No idea?!” He couldn’t help being angry, “Ruby tried to stab me in the middle of space! And Aquamarine took me to Homeworld to be shattered! How on earth did you think that a fusion of those two gems wouldn’t try to hurt me?!”
The irritation on Pearl’s face grew at his accusations, “Watch your tone young man. Ruby and Aquamarine were in the past when Bluebird came, they didn’t seem like they would cause any harm at all!”
Steven only seemed angrier at her deflection of his arguments, “My ton- Don’t try to flip the script, you all put me in danger!”
“No, we did not!” Pearl’s voice cracked high, as it always did when she was getting frustrated.
Steven laughed in disbelief, “So let me get this straight, you knew what both Ruby and Aquamarine did to me?”
Pearl looked at taking in the fact, “Of course, Steven thi-”
He interrupted before she could continue, pink lighting up his face in frustration, “And you knew that Bluebird was a fusion of Aquamarine and Ruby, who may I remind you both tried to kill me?!”
Pearl shrunk back on herself a bit as the realisation was placed before her, “Yes but-“
“So,” he interrupted her again, “you let two gems, who had fused into one, into my house, despite the fact that they had both hurt me in the past.” He looked at them in disbelief.
Amethyst stepped forward offering a hand to Pearl, “In Pearl’s defence, you’ve invited every gem we thought were dangerous here as well.”
They were joking, right?
…
No, they were not. He was more than angry, he was pissed, how fucking dare they.
“NO! I HAVEN’T. Peridot barricaded herself in my bathroom,” he counted off on his fingers, “Lapis stayed in the barn. Bismuth got bubbled after she tried to shatter me. Navy ran away after I offered to let her stay in the barn. Jasper’s in a cave. The diamonds were here for maybe 5 hours max. And the corrupted gems all live in Little Homeworld! The most dangerous person I let in the house was Centipeddle!” He there his hands in the air before pointing them accusingly at the three in front of him, “You three were the ones who let two people who tried to KILL ME, and held NO remorse for it, stay here!”
The gems stood there silently, a heavy air between them and the boy still glowing with anger in the doorway.
He had, had enough of the gems ignoring his feelings and pushing aside their worries. He was tired and stressed and this was just so stupid. The gems knew what they had done was wrong and yet they still refused to face it.
“So, what? Nothing? No apology? Of course,” his hands rose to rub at his face in stress, “why would I expect anything mo-” His hands lowered to show them glowing pink. He…he hadn’t even noticed. He looked back up at the gems horrified. They looked at the boy in not only worry but fear, but they also weren’t looking directly at him. He quickly turned around to be faced by the shattered windows behind him, broken glass glittering on the floor at his feet. The pink didn’t disappear though, it almost seemed to grow stronger as the anxiety in him was fuelled.
“Stevo, hey buddy, it’s alright-”
He looked around at them in shock.
“W-what. No, it’s- it’s not. I should be- I should have known- I didn’t mean to- I didn’t want to- I’m not angry, I just-.”
“Steven, it’s okay,” Garnet’s voice cut through his own half patched sentences. “You were right to be angry we let someone who had hu-”
“NO! No, I’m doing it again, I can’t lose control again, I can’t hurt you guys!” The wooden floor cracked beneath him as he took a step forward, then suddenly several more back through the glass and out the door, causing him to lose his footing and fall down.
“Steven! Are you alright?” He looked up in a panic to see Pearl walking over, in his panicked state a wall of pink shields formed in front of the doorway covering the broken window frames too. She stopped just short of face planting into it.
“Steven! Please drop this wall, we just want to help!” She called out. He shook his head taking it into his hands, a murmur of ‘no’ under his panicked breath, his body still alight in pink, blood dripping from his wounds, the glass refusing to let his body heal them.
“No, no! I’m just going to hurt you more, stay away from me!” His words forming the reaction of time slowing down as Garnet and Amethyst’s footsteps fell slower as they walked toward the wall.
Steven picked himself up off the ground, he was too dangerous here, he shouldn’t have brought up anything with the gems, why did he think it was a good idea to be so selfish? He had to get away. Well, super speed was a good start then. He wasn’t sure where he was running to, but he could see Beach City still hadn’t opened for the morning, so he didn’t have to worry about passing by anyone.
It was easier to just leave after that, running up past the sign on the road, it must have taken 10 minutes in real time but he had been running for about an hour before he finally realised, he’d run nearly all the way to Connie’s house…she should be home. Well at least she might make him feel better than anywhere else right now.
The world started to speed up again as he walked up to her house. The front door opening to Mr. Maheswaran collecting the morning mail, looking at the young man with surprise.
“Oh, Steven! I’m surprised to see you here this morning…did you…walk here?” He seemed concerned at the fact he was there so early.
“Uh, yeah, just a nice morning walk to get the muscles moving!” He nodded along, the confused and concerned expression on his face, melded into a friendly smile.
“Well if you’d like to come in Connie should be waking up soon and you can join us for breakfast.” Steven smiled brightly and nodded in agreement, following him into the house, the pink glow finally fading from his body but the paranoid feeling of anxiety that everything was going to fall apart at any moment, still held chains in his mind.
He took a few steps on the grass and felt a sharp pain cross the soles of his feet and he fell backwards to relieve the pain, Mr Maheswaran looking back in confusion, before noticing the young man holding one of his feet in his lap, covered in a dried sheen of blood.
“Steven! What happened?” Well, there’s a first for everything.
“I don’t know. I just walked over on the grass and it started hurting.”
“I knew this lawn had brambles, come inside, I’ll grab some wipes and the first aid kit, just wipe off the blood and use the tweezers to pull anything stuck in your skin out.”
The house was clean as always, coat hanger by the door, the living room to the left where Lion was lying on the floor and stairs to the upper floor in front of him, a doorway to the right leading him into the dining and kitchen area. He took a seat at the table as Mr Maheswaran moved to the kitchen giving Steven the first aid kit and keeping light chatter with the young man while cooking. He had thrown the bloody wipes in the bin and pulled out all the glass hiding it discreetly in the bunched-up wipes. The patter of footsteps came down the stairs as Steven and Mr Maheswaran were talking, Connie’s face turned the corner showing a tired surprise at seeing Steven at the table so early in the morning.
“Steven! What are you doing here?” The smile on her face helped him to cement that she wasn’t upset at him being here.
He laughed a bit before answering, “A morning walk went a bit longer than I thought it would and realised and by the time I did realise I had just about walked here and thought I might come by for a surprise.”
“Well, it’s certainly never bad to see you.” She snuck in a quick peck on his cheek while her father was turned, but Steven’s red face gave away their activity when he finally turned back, he didn’t mention it, but the snippet of his laugh and a gentle eye roll gave away that he knew.
They all continued to chatter together, Lion eventually joining them and crawling beside the table next to the both of them. When Mr Maheswaran brought out breakfast he joined at the other side of the table. At the sound of plates being set, Lion’s head popped up, eyes as big saucers as he pouted in front of the three of them. They laughed and, asking permission, Steven gave the meat on his plate to the big kitten, finally resting his head back down, sedated for now. Breakfast continued on, even when in the other room both Connie and Mr Maheswaran’s phones rang and buzzed, Steven was glad he hadn’t brought his along, he would hate to be rude and disrupt them. The plates were collected up and despite the older man’s worries he and Steven worked to clean the dishes while Connie went to check on the insistent messages. When they had finished, she came back in worried look on her, before Steven could comment she ushered him upstairs, a quick comment to her father about needed to talk privately. Her room door shut behind her and she held up her phone to the young man in front of her.
“Do the gems know you’re here? They’ve been texting me all morning.” The messages in front of him panicked and frequent, about his whereabouts and…about what happened. He must have been silent for too long, the phone lowered, and his panicked eyes met her gaze, equal to his with worry.
“Steven are you okay?
He felt his chest tighten like it had before, but he plastered a smile on his face and tried his best to seem fine as he answered in a cracked voice.
“Of course, I’m fine Connie. Everything’s fine.”
Her worried face turned to shock, “Fine? Steven the front of your house looks like it got hit by a hurricane!” She scrolled down the messages to show she had been talking to them and pictures of the shattered windows and cracked floor came to view. He felt himself start to shake as he looked at the images, the memories of the earlier events coming back to him with no remorse and his stomach twisted tightly with guilt from his earlier words. A small gasp pulled his attention from the screen to see the worried expression on Connie’s face was now intertwined with shock and surprise.
“Steven, why-,” she stopped took a deep breath and said in a warm calm tone, “Steven you’re glowing pink, are you alright?”
He couldn’t help the panic that over took his body, quickly stepping away he hadn’t even realised that the rest of the world had slowed down for a fraction of a second before he was already on the other side of her room, backed up against the wall next to her desk. She quickly glanced at the empty air in front of her before settling her eyes on the frozen glowing figure next to her desk, pity and concern filling her eyes. God, he shouldn’t have come here it was such a bad idea to think she would be any safer around him, she didn’t know the full gravity, she didn’t know how dangerous he could be, she could get hurt and god he couldn’t live with himself if that happened. She was coming closer, her whispered words blocked out by the rushing of blood in his ears. He felt like a cornered animal, short panicked breaths escaping his mouth as Connie chanted calming words to him. He looked around for an escape and his eyes landed on the window, but he knew that his floating powers wouldn’t work at the moment with his stress blocking out the happy thoughts he needed. And Connie was getting closer.
Closer.
Closer.
He looked past her shoulder towards the door, his upper body sliding down the wall a little so he could burst forward and run towards it. That was before the door was opened to the three very worried guardians now in the room. They each bolted in with their own worried questions, talking over one another and all melded together in a chorus of chaos in the room. He felt even more cornered as he saw Mr Maheswaran at the door trying to calm the gems before, which meant he couldn’t slip past and out. The rest of his upper body soon slipped down the wall as his knees folded into his upper body and a wall of pink shields surrounded him in a shell of panic. He could still hear muffled words, most of them from Connie and most of them with that stern, angry voice he had grown to hear her using when she needed to get her point across, he had never been at the aim of it before, always respecting her wishes on the first ask, it felt humiliating and torturous, he hated making people upset and it broke him to feel her rage. His eyes were now blinded by his own tears as he openly sobbed, no longer strong enough to hold it in anymore, tears free falling, and air being gulped into his lungs in between quick and panicked breaths.
Too much was going on at the moment. Her boyfriend was in a shield bubble, the gems were squabbling, and her dad wasn’t being much help since the gems kept ignoring them. It eventually led to Connie using her ‘Priyanka’ voice as her father had dubbed it. The gems looked down at the ground in shame and she saw her father breathe a sigh of relief at her control over the situation. Eventually, everyone was pushed out of the room and the only ones left were Connie and her boy in the bubble. He walked over and knelt beside the dome, faint sobs and gulps of air could be heard through the thin shields.
“Steven? Can you please take down the bubble? The gems and dad are gone now so it’s just us.”
The bubble shrank a bit in size around his body and she knew that was a sign he was curling into himself further which wasn’t good for his breathing. She knew she wouldn’t be able to pull him out by just talking, surprisingly his tactics didn’t work on himself as often as they worked on others. She leaned against the wall next the dome and glanced around her room at anything that would help, her eyes flashed to the violin stand next to her bed, it has been a couple of weeks since she had played but tuning the string still came natural to her. They had played before, but she always remembered the time he had arrived at her house bouncing on the balls of his feet and once they were together, he shoved a hand full of sheet music into her hands saying he wrote a song for them to play. The handwriting was messy be legible and even now she smiles when he asks if they can play ‘The Jam Song’. The song was easy, she switched between slightly higher and lower pitches for their separate parts and by the end of it the sobbing in the bubble had stopped and it was pressing slightly against her arm, meaning he had uncurled, and the bubble followed with him.
She pressed her hand against the translucent panes and his own pressed back, the shield shrinking until she held his hand in hers, lowering the joined hands between them. She put her violin aside and scooted over beside her boyfriend, detaching their hands and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, his own hesitant and shaking arms wrapping around her a few moments later. It was a silent moment, neither of them were talking as she was rubbing circles into his back and his shaky breaths were still audible over her shoulder. She was glad he wasn’t hyperventilating or sobbing anymore but the longer they stayed the more exhaustion she could feel settle into his body, he was leaning against her and his arms gently rested on her waist and pulling his head away from her shoulders dark circles lined under his red eyes.
“Alright,” he sighed, “now that things have calmed down do you wanna talk?”
He hesitated for a moment before nodding his head. “Do you think you could just ask questions and I answer?”
She smiled, “of course. Are you feeling okay?”
“No.” It came and ended quickly.
“How do you feel at the moment?”
“I feel like crap.”
“Why’s, that?”
“I destroyed the front of the house over something stupid.”
“Well, your opinion may be biased, what happened.”
He sighed and looked at the ground for a moment collecting his thoughts, “Bluebird, a fusion of two gems, Eyeball and Aquamarine, came to my house and the gems were fine with them but I wasn’t, nothing bad happened for a day and then they threatened dad, I got mad and fought them and then the gems fused and poofed their fusion then they ran away, dad was sad cause his hair got cut off and we went inside and…yeah”
She looked over at him, but he didn’t look back, staring at the floor with a tired gaze. That really didn’t sound like anything that would get him angry enough that some new power of his destroys the front of his house.
“I feel like you’re not telling me the whole story. You know I’m not gonna judge you Steven, I just wanna help.”
He curled in further on himself before finishing the story, “I wanted the gems to apologise and they didn’t, and I got mad. I told you, it was getting mad for a stupid reason.”
“Well, stupid question, but what did you want them to apologise for?”
He was silent for a moment, his brows furrowing, “I wanted them to apologise for not trusting me when I told them that Bluebird was bad news, for belittling me feelings, for not taking me seriously, just- I knew Bluebird was bad news a fusion of two gems who tried to kill me sure sounds like a stable friendly fusion doesn’t it.” His sharp words accented by the pink glow on his cheeks and sudden turn to face her, his face tense with sarcastic anger. It quickly melted to shock and horror as he scrambled to his feet muttering “I have to go.”
Connie quickly got to her feet too, rushing to the doorway to block him.
“No, Steven please don’t leave it’s alright, it’s fine.”
“What? No Connie please. Let me leave I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t, Steven I trust you.”
“Connie, you don’t understand what this is even I don’t understand what this is!” The glowing on his cheeks spread to cover his face and down to his arms.
“That’s okay! It’s okay not to know,” she took his hands in hers gently holding them to reassure him, “you don’t have to know about every power and you’re not going to be able to control them perfectly right off the bat.”
He looked up at her in shock, disbelief mixed in as well. “But you saw what it did to the house- Connie I couldn’t stand to think I could hurt you because of this- because I couldn’t control myself.” Frustrated tears were building at the edges of his eyes.
“Steven…I know you don’t want to hurt me but you’re hurting at the moment and I want to help.” She gently placed her hand on his cheek, he leaned into it, the glow already fading at the soft touch.
“Alright, so from what I can tell, at the moment, you glow when your stressed, angry and anxious.” He looked up at her sadly, nodding along, “those are common feeling with the fight, flight and freeze response, so I’d say it links to that too.” He glanced away but held the hand on his face, not wanting to break the contact. “So, I’d say, you have a talk to your GP about mental health stuff, cause considering I already go to a psychologist for the stuff I went through on the missions, then you may need it even more than me.” He looked up at her in confusion.
“A…GP?”
“Yes, your…regular doctor?”
He glanced away worriedly, “Connie…I’ve never been to the doctor.”
She looked up at him in shock. “You’re…you’re joking, right?” He looked away from her ashamed, “Steven you’re 16 and you’ve never been to the doctor?” She couldn’t help her voice raising in panic, it was ludicrous in her head that even though he had healing spit he should have gone to the doctor at least once, but the pink glow and anxiety quickly rising on his face made her rethink on how to approach the situation.
“It’s okay! I’m not angry or upset at you, although I may have a chat with your father.” She mumbled, eliciting a small laugh from the boy in front of her who was slightly glowing on his cheeks but the anxious expression on his face was mixed with amusement at the thought of his father being chewed out by 15-year-old with a sword. She smiled sweetly at him, happy to see that he wasn’t as scared as before.
“Well, my mum may have some open appointments next week, so we’ll book the closest one and get you checked, does that sound good?”
He looked away nervously, the bright pink blush gone and replaced with a much more human red. “Do you think you may be able to come with, I don’t wanna be alone.”
She couldn’t help but giggle, “Of course, I could never leave you alone with my mother, who know what she would do to you.” She laughed at her statement and Steven joined with her.
They knew that eventually they would have to leave the bedroom and face the gems, not mention talk to Greg and Priyanka about the future appointment, but for now, holding each other close was all that mattered.