Chapter Text
"Pearlie? What do you think about marriage?" Marina had asked, once upon a time during an afternoon right before Off The Hook was due to give another stage announcement. Pearl looked up from her comfy chair with a brow raised, dropping her phone from its location in front of her face to let it flop loosely onto the quilted white pleather of her dress.
"I can appreciate the tax bennies. Why d'ya ask?" Pearl shrugged, finding her cohost staring wistfully out the massive studio window. The bustle of the Square had been only at its infancy then, kids gathering their courage to leave the familiarity of the Plaza behind.
"Oh, you know, just thinking. I sort of think it's romantic, that's all." The tall girl hummed. Her spoon-shaped pupils glimmered silvery pink as the sun started to go down, not quite yet to the point where the sky started changing colors.
"Mm, yeah, it's a cute idea. Just finding that person you wanna spend forever with." Pearl found herself agreeing, diving back into her social media feed to hide the rush of ink staining her cheeks. "I can see myself gettin' married someday."
"Really?" Marina's head flicked around. Her long tentacles whipped with the motion, and the longest one tangled and draped over her shoulders. Gorgeous. Gorgeous, beautiful Marina. She shyly untangled it, running her dyed fingertips down its length as it untwisted. "I didn't think you'd be, um, into it. You're so independent."
"Well I'd be the one taking care of them, duh." Pearl laughed, levity as her shield. "The Houzuki empire's got everything my future boo could want!"
"Of course!" Marina laughed too. "It's got you, after all."
And if that didn't make Pearl's stomach do a funny little flip.
"New rotation in fifteen, ladies." Their producer leaned her head in, grabbing their attention with a knock against the wall. "Get to wardrobe and makeup."
"Right away!" Marina chirped, following the command with Pearl following behind slowly. The next announcements came and went, and they pre-recorded the announcements that would take place overnight, and then the work day was over. Marina went to her apartment and Pearl went to the Houzuki estate and that was that.
Then, a few weeks later, Callie Cuttlefish went missing, along with the Square's Great Zapfish. They were found at the same time about a month after that. Marina said the incident unnerved her, so Pearl decided that a little day-trip away from the limelight would do her some good. She surprised her a while later with a trip to the place they met, Mount Nantai. They found an old-as-shell walkie-talkie on the ground in the woods.
The rest was history.
Skip forward a couple years. They start dating. They mostly-kinda-legally little-sibling adopt a teenager that really isn't that much younger than they are. They make the leap from national stars to inter-national stars and start playing gigs across the globe. They get a little bit stuck in a virtual reality of Marina's creation. The old man they befriended alongside that adopted teen gets mummified, partially un-mummified, then un-olded in that order. Their world tour ends. Then the not-old-old-man convinces Pearl that she's ready to propose to Marina while Marina's ex-boss-slash-recovering-evil-dictator goads him on.
Okay. Okay okay. Deep breaths. It was just a regular old training camp for the New New Squidbeak Splatoon. She was, technically, a member by association. Just a normal training camp for a normal secret agent organization that she was a normal part of that was going to take place hiking up to the top of normal Mount Nantai. Only the most important place in the world.
Only the place where she met the love of her life. The love of her life that she was going to propose to by the end of the weekend.
Deep double-battered fried Cod on a stick.
Pearl Houzuki was horrifically and irrevocably whipped.
"Pearlie, are you sure you don't need to pack more?" Marina called from the bowels of their shared bedroom. Pearl jumped from the couch in the sitting room connected to the bedroom closet and sauntered through, stretching.
"Chillax 'Reena, I used to just screw around up there with nothin' but the clothes on my back and a cellphone. There ain't nothin' on that mountain that I ain't afraid to fight off barehanded!" She grinned, sidling up to her long-term girlfriend and squeezing herself into the space between Marina's arm and her body.
"But that was so long ago! I mean really, at least pack one more pair of socks. And an extra sweater. Some boots in case it rains. Oh, and a raincoat in that case too-" Marina fussed, breaking away to go flit about the second closet.
"You do know we gotta carry all o' this up the mountain, right? That means pack light!" Pearl rhymed. At first it was unintentional, but once she started she couldn't just stop. That's bad form. Rap was a lifestyle. "You're always gonna be a delight, and girl you know I don't wanna fight. The bag I got is already tight, and I promise you we're gonna be alright!"
Marina sighed, reemerging with one of Pearl's ugly Squidmas sweaters in her fists.
"Oh, alright, you win this round Pearlie." She giggled, that beautiful sound turning Pearl's brain matter into a squishy pinkish mush. "You always know what to say."
"Aw yee, E-Z GGs yo, word up." Pearl babbled. She felt like an idiot but Marina planted a kiss right on her forehead anyway.
"If you're certain you don't need anything else, then I should go over my own bags one more time." On the bed, behind Pearl's brand-new pink duffle, was Marina's bags. A massive outdoorsy hiking pack, another backpack, a fanny pack with some loose snacks spilling out, a rolling cooler... "Do you think I overpacked?"
"Maybe just a li'l." Pearl snickered, climbing onto the bed and over the unmade comforter to help out. "We're keepin' the snack pack though."
"Oh, absolutely!"
It took a fair bit of reorganizing and convincing- no babe you don't need to bring three different brellas the splatoon has weapons covered- but they managed to squeeze in the necesities and Marina's 'emergency supplies' into the larger hiking pack.
Tomorrow morning, and Pearl's chauffer would be taking them to the base of the mountain, after stopping by Marina's old apartment that they had gifted to Eight to pick up them and Four, who'd finally caved in and started living with the other agent. Eight was having an absolute blast with them, sending frequent texts full of selfies and pictures of mementos picked up during activities spent together. Pearl wanted to try and convince Eight to take up scrapbooking, it'd be a great hobby for them since they loved being able to finally keep their memories, but Marina was convinced that Eight would try and tape in Four's notebook papers and didn't know how to tell them that it was probably an invasion of Four's privacy. Pearl argued that it was no different from screenshotting a chatroom. Besides, if there was something that Four needed to say and really didn't want to have spread, they could handspeak it. Or just eat the paper afterwards. It's what Pearl would do.
Marina was in the middle of explaining what 'pica' was when their phones went off simultaneously, derailing that conversation entirely as they scrambled to locate wherever their devices wound up in the mess their bedroom had become. Marina's phone was lodged inside the leg of a folded-up pair of jeans that she'd removed from her luggage to be put away, and Pearl had set hers down inside the minifridge in the bathroom when she'd emptied out the cooler, ice packs melting in the bathtub. It was a message in the splatoon's group chat, of course. Why else would it have hit both of their phones at once?
'Hope everybody's done packing. Inkopolis crew, you better get here early tomorrow, the traffic on the way was crazy.' Marie had sent a selfie with the rest of the Splatoon that had carpooled from the Splatlands. The captain was sitting beside her with the little smallfry buddy nestled in the dip of their cap, looking at something offscreen. One of Callie's pink tentacles was flared out from that general direction, though the idol-agent's face was out of the frame. In the background Craig was tending the campfire, Frye behind him with a wide stance and her head thrown back mid-cackle. Sheldon was next to her, his goggles shined-over in the firelight, holding a fire extinguisher. It wasn't pointed at the fire. It was pointed at Frye. Just in case. Shiver, Big Man, the newer Agent Three, and DJ Octavio weren't in the photo, but they had to be around with them somewhere. They'd all gone a day early to compensate for the distance between Splatsville and Inkopolis. Pearl couldn't wait to catch up.
'We just finished! Don't have too much fun before we get there.' Marina's typed response popped up on screen, her giggle trailing in from the other room.
'Tell 8 we dont need to bring a baseball bat' Four texted, failing to provide any context.
'It's for if we run into creatures!' Was Eight's justification.
'Craig and I got knives.' Octavio posted a picture of one of said knives in his hand. It was shaped like a fountain pen, an antique style from their days before the war. 'Bring the bat.'
'Better a baseball bat than soccer cleats.' Pearl sent, snickering.
"Hey!" Marina shouted from the other room, making her laugh harder.
'See!' Eight quickly typed, accidentally replacing the exclamation mark with a number one, needing to go back in and edit it. Too late, Four saw.
'1' They put in the chat.
'1' Newbie Three copied.
'1' There was Shiver.
'1' And Captain Junior too. Aw, might as well.
'1' Pearl gave her own.
'Me!' Callie broke the chain, to a few scattered keysmashes and 'LOL's. 'Also if you bring the bat then the captain's gonna make you train w it. :)'
'Fine by me!' Eight replied, and at that point Pearl decided to get off of the bathroom floor. She cracked her cartilage and grunted. At this rate she was going to get all stiff and wrinkly before Craig and Octavio had their chance for round two.
"Ugh. I'm gettin' old." She complained halfheartedly to Marina once she re-entered their room.
"Pearlie, you're only twenty five. You turn twenty six in three months. You're not old." Marina rolled her eyes fondly as she kept looking at her phone. Pearl flopped onto the bed, scootching until she came up behind Marina's back to hug her and bury her face in her shoulderblades. She snuck a look at Marina's phone while she was at it. She was going over the schedule again. Well if that kept up she was only going to stress over it. Luckily, Pearl was very good at being distracting.
"I dunnooo~... I think you're gonna have a granny girlfriend. Just a little old lady, yellin' at kids to get off my lawn." She slowly pulled her head up, coming up over the neck of Marina's loose-fitting t-shirt to nuzzle into the back of her head where her tentacles began. The rubbery texture bounced at the nudging, and a few of Marina's suckers twisted around to cling to Pearl's tank top and arms. Her own tentacles were too short to grip anything but her face, or maybe a pair of headphones, but she loved how Marina had enough control over hers to just grab on and let go whenever she wanted. "Just me and Craig and the deej, sittin' around talking smack about music these days and whining about the price of soy sauce. Hey wait, am I like actually older than them now, technically? 'Cause you'd put them down as twenty-one on their fake cards but when you and Marie biomarker-ed their ink cells you said they were closer to twenty fo-"
"Pearl.~" Marina crooned, interrupting her. "Don't be weird."
"Awright, awright." Pearl snickered, accepting defeat. "I'm just saying, I should get, like. Seniority. Deference. I got that wisdom of the ages."
"Do you?" Marina joked, freeing up her tentacles from their grip on Pearl's body to move to the side and lie down. Pearl pouted, more upset over the loss of snuggles than her girlfriend teasing her. She readjusted so that she could lie down and have her face next to Marina's face, but upside down in relation like that one scene in 'The Amazing Spider-Crab'. When Marina turned her head to look at her, she stole a quick kiss. Just like the movie. Proving that action movies ruled. Marina, naturally, squeaked and buried her face in her hands. "Pearlie!"
"What? I'm not allowed to give my beautiful girlfriend who I love a little kiss-kiss?!" Pearl protested playfully, grabbing Marina's arms to try and pry them open. "C'mon, open up so I can do it again!"
"Pff-hahahahahaha!" Marina burst into giggles as Pearl pushed past her defenses, littering her face with tiny little kisses wherever she could reach. "Pearlie stop, it tickles!"
"If you wanna stop me, you know how!" Now Pearl was just blatently asking for trouble. Marina smirked, though it looked a little silly when it was being broken up by her occasional jolts of laughter. In one swift motion, dang that military training left her as some buff stuff, Marina rolled backwards, pinned Pearl beneath her, and pressed a kiss strong enough to make their noses bump to Pearl's lips. When they separated, Pearl was left smiling like a doofus. "Ahahaha. Awesome."
"Glad you think so." Marina smiled sweetly, dropping one last peck against Pearl's nose before she rolled off and started pulling their bags off the bed. Not like they strictly needed to in order to sleep on it, it was the biggest custom size money could buy. Marina placed the bags by the door, ready to be grabbed come morning.
Cod. Tomorrow.
"D'ya wanna get dinner? I'm feelin' pasta." Pearl blurted out, rolling off the bed. Anything to get her mind off of the fact that she had to figure out how to propose to the greatest octoling to roam this earth and oh cod why was she still thinking about it stop, stop, stop.
"Zucchini noodles?" Marina asked. Her cute excited face could have lit up a stadium.
"You know it!" As the two of them walked hand-in-hand to go put in the request for the estate chefs, butterflyfish swarmed Pearl's throat.
Tomorrow morning. One weekend that's gonna change her life forever.