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Three days into Marina’s stay at her house, Pearl comes to a realization.
They’ve been dating for, what, a few months now? Actually, four months and three days, if she’s being exact. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of examples to pull reference from, but she feels like their relationship would still be considered fresh and new.
And yet, Marina might spend more time at Pearl’s house than she does her own. And most of the time, what she doesn’t spend here is because Pearl is over at her apartment. Some might say they’re moving too fast, and others (definitely not Marie) can’t stand how inseparable they are.
A month into their relationship Pearl had called her father to tell him about them. For the years during her transition from teenager to adult, though he always supported her, they butted heads over most things. This included her spotty love life, if that’s what she could even call it. But before Pearl could even tell him anything about Marina, he had commented about how he could hear the smile in her voice, and that she just sounded lighter in general.
It hit her like a truck, mostly. If there was one person that knew her both before and after Marina, it was her father. As busy as he was when she was growing up, he was there to watch how she changed. The years where she was unhappy, though she never overtly showed it. And then, too, he noticed the way she lit up when Off the Hook was formed. Part of it was always due to the fact that she finally found success doing what she loves. But the other part, unbeknownst to her, was Marina.
And her father must have noticed that before she did, because when she told him that they had started dating, he only told her that it was about time she noticed Marina like that and did something about it. That a woman like that only comes by once in a lifetime.
Pearl would never tell anyone this, but hearing those words from her father made her tear up. Standing on the back patio of her mansion, she had to take a seat as she digested his words. The final blow came when he said that her mother would have been proud of her. She had sobbed once, and then tearily told him how happy Marina made her, and how happy it made her that he approved, because Marina wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
He had assured her that Marina would always be welcome in the family, and that he couldn’t wait to meet her again—this time as the girlfriend of his princess.
The phone call was productive, to say the least, and the first thing Pearl did the next time she saw Marina was tell her that she loves her for the first time.
Something of a month later, Pearl’s father had business to attend to in Inkopolis. It was the perfect opportunity to catch up with him, and reintroduce Marina.
Marina told Pearl that she doesn’t remember much of her parents. That she doesn’t one hundred percent know if she has a father at all, or two mothers, or something else. Pearl told her that it was okay; they could share hers.
And so they did. Her father greeted Marina with a big hug, and Pearl laughed at how she beats him out on height by a few inches. He gives them both a hearty laugh, telling Marina that Pearl’s mother took up all the height between the three of them.
Her father’s version of the Dad Talk wasn’t really that threatening. In fact, it consisted more of him telling Marina how happy he is that Pearl has her. It made Marina blush furiously, and maybe get a little misty eyed.
The whole experience felt like something shifted in their relationship. That something got really serious. When Marina promised her father that she would always do her best to make Pearl happy, it felt like a vow. And she had to remind herself that the first time she ever even kissed this woman was only two months ago.
But she’s known Marina for almost four years now. They’ve been through everything the average person could imagine and more together. She knows practically every in and out of Marina and how she works, and she’s so in love with her that sometimes it hurts a little.
The realization comes to her when they’re both laying in Pearl’s bed. It has a king sized amount of space for them to take up, but Marina is cuddled up to Pearl anyway. Pearl is laying on her back, an arm tucked behind her head. Her other arm is wrapped around Marina’s shoulders, though no effort on her behalf is required to keep the octoling glued to her side.
It feels horribly domestic, as Marina traces her fingertips along Pearl’s collarbone and rests her face in the crook of her neck. And Pearl thinks, maybe Marina should just move in with her.
When they were getting ready to get into bed earlier, Marina retrieved her pajamas from one of the drawers of Pearl’s dresser. And it’s not like those are the only clothes she has here—practically half of her wardrobe lives at Pearl’s house, mixed in with her clothes in her closet and her drawers. When they do their nightly routine, Marina uses the toothbrush she leaves in Pearl’s ensuite, and her skin care products too.
The idea nags at Pearl as she strokes the skin of Marina’s shoulder. The octoling is already fast asleep at this point, evident by the soft breaths against her neck, so it gives her time to ruminate on it.
They practically already do live together, she thinks. Marina has the key to her house, and she has access to Marina’s apartment building and the key to the apartment itself. There’s just one final push to make it official—for Marina to move the rest of her things from that apartment to her house. And then there’s none of Marina leaving her house to go home, because her home is here with her.
It makes Pearl giddy.
When she wakes in the morning, she’s alone in bed. Disoriented, she sits up, pushing the covers off of the top half of her body. When she places her hand down on the bed to the side, it’s still warm from Marina’s body heat. Pearl smiles.
As she drags herself out of bed, she muses at how only Marina would be able to get her out of bed before ten in the morning. She could very easily sleep in until noon, but she misses the warmth of her body beside hers, which leads her to pull a shirt on over her head and make her way downstairs.
When she approaches the kitchen, she finds Marina facing away from her, making breakfast at the stove. Her long tentacles are tied back to avoid the incident of one squirming its way onto a hot burner, and she’s humming a Squid Sisters song in her lower register. It warms her hearts, the way Marina feels at home enough in this house to move about it without Pearl right by her side. It’s not the first time she’s done such a thing, but with the realization from last night still sitting at the back of her mind, Pearl feels herself falling even more in love with her, fantasizing about the life she hopes they’ll have together soon.
Pearl is notoriously light on her feet when she means to be, and Marina doesn’t notice when she pads her way over to her after a few minutes of observing her girl. The very first thing she does, when she’s within reach of her girlfriend, is slide her arms around her hips and pull herself in, pressing her front against her back in a warm embrace.
Marina’s shoulders shoot up in surprise for a second. “Pearl—!” She says. “Where did you come from?”
Pearl just chuckles, pressing her face further into Marina’s shoulder blades. Marina scoffs, and reaches for the knob for the burner she’s using, lowering the heat. Then, she turns around in Pearl’s arms so they’re facing each other. “Good morning, baby.” Pearl says when their eyes meet.
Marina smiles and leans down, pressing her version of a good morning to Pearl’s lips in the form of a sweet kiss.
“What’cha makin’?” Pearl asks, peeking past Marina’s body.
“Hot breakfast. Pancakes, mainly.” She says and smirks a little. “Just for you.”
“You’re such a sap.” Pearl says.
“Mmm, it’s just splatfest rules, I think.” Marina teases, bringing the mixing spatula in her hand down to wipe a dollop of pancake batter on Pearl’s nose. “If I had it my way we’d be having a delicious cold breakfast.”
Pearl rolls her eyes fondly. “Say whatever you want, ‘Rina, I know the truth.”
“And what’s that, Pearlie?”
“That you love me.” Pearl grins, lifting herself onto her toes so she can press another kiss to Marina’s lips, smearing the batter onto Marina’s nose as well.
Marina giggles, her cheeks warming as she licks her thumb to wipe both of their noses off. “I can’t argue with that,” She says, licking her thumb again to clean it off. She then brings her hand to the side of Pearl’s face to brush one of her tentacles behind her ear, revealing her small ear. “How did you sleep?” She asks, toying with the black stud earring Pearl currently has in.
“Really good,” Pearl responds, pink dusting her cheeks. “Always better when you’re here.”
“Now who’s the sap?” Marina laughs.
“I wear it as a badge of honour.” Pearl says triumphantly. Marina smiles at that and begins to wiggle out of Pearl’s embrace, turning back to the stove to prevent the pancakes from burning.
Breakfast is eaten mostly in silence, surprisingly, but it’s probably only because Pearl is too busy stuffing her face. Her first few years on the surface, Marina wasn’t a very good cook, and she’ll be the first to admit that. Pearl might be the second; entirely out of love. There was no blame to place on Marina, Pearl later found out, because the Octarians didn’t seem to have access to the surplus of food they have in Inkopolis, and it seemed apparent that Marina used to be on a specific food regiment. On top of that, her first few years were quite busy with learning the language and culture, and also getting Off the Hook off the ground. There were many late nights in the studio with take out ramen.
Then came their news deal, which completely swamped them in work.
It seemed like for four years straight the two of them were constantly working towards something, and then it all came to a halt when Chaos vs. Order wrapped up. Pearl made promises of a world tour, but that is something yet to see an official start date.
Suddenly they were rewarded with all this free time, and Marina became fascinated with cooking very quickly, watching cooking videos and experimenting with all sorts of ingredients. This new development coincided very closely with Pearl finally understanding her feelings for the octoling and doing something about it, and it didn’t take long for her to end up being her taste tester. She shouldn’t have been so surprised at how quickly Marina improved.
This hobby quickly evolved into becoming a shared thing. Instead of simply being Marina’s taste tester, she would help her work. That led to becoming more interested in it herself, and her abysmal diet began to improve.
One day not too long ago, when Pearl was changing out of her clothes and pulling on a fresh pair of boxers, she noticed that the waistband was squishing against her hips a little more than usual. Staring in the mirror, she realized that for the first time in her life she had actually put on weight.
She had always heard about such a phenomenon, where falling in love and being loved just the same could do something like that to you. She had never imagined it would happen to her, for one reason or another, and the next time she ran her hands along Marina’s sides she realized that the same thing had happened to her.
It’s just another way in which Marina has improved her life. And cooking together is just another thing that’s made it feel like Marina belongs here in Pearl’s house with her, making it a home.
After finishing their breakfast, Marina washes the dishes and Pearl dries them. It’s an unspoken routine that they’ve fallen into recently. Marina is completely focused on her task at hand, allowing Pearl to stare uninterrupted as she takes the dishes to be dried from the rack where the octoling sets them.
Her father was right. Completely and utterly so. Pearl is convinced that she’ll never meet anyone like Marina again. From her beauty, to her mind, to her talent, to her surprisingly dry sense of humour, to her kindness, Pearl could go on forever. She will never quite be able to write down how she feels about Marina and put it into a song. She’ll keep trying, sure, but the way she feels is so completely intangible.
The kind of love her and Marina have, it reminds her of her parents. How they loved and cared for each other, how they were not only each other’s lovers but also each other’s best friends. Pearl’s memories of her mother are spotty at best, but never could she doubt how she cared for her father, and how much her father cared for her in return.
Even up until the very end. And long after that. Maybe that’s what her father meant. Because in the eighteen years of her absence, he still wears that gold band on his finger, twisting it around in his quiet moments. He had found his once in a lifetime woman, and now Pearl has found hers.
“Move in with me.” Pearl blurts out.
The plate Marina is holding slips from her grasp, and falls back into the sink. “Huh?”
“I want you to move in with me.” She repeats, still firm in her belief. “Most of your stuff is here, you’re here all the time anyway, and I just want you here. You make this big house feel like a real home.”
“Really?” Is all Marina can say at first, her eyes widened.
“Yes! I love you so much, and I want to go to sleep and wake up with you every night, not every so often, and I wanna brush my teeth with you, and cook with you,” She says, her eyes trailing to the floor as she continues to list things off. “Clean with you, laze around with you, I—I just—”
“Pearl,” Marina says, recovering from her initial shock.
“Yeah?”
“Of course I’ll move in with you.” She says, unable to fight the huge smile forming on her face.
Pearl perks up, her ears twitching. “Really?”
Marina giggles at Pearl parroting what she herself had just said, and takes the inkling’s face between her hands, leaning down to kiss her. “Yes.”
And Pearl’s never been so happy, she thinks. The only thing that rivals the feeling is when she realized that her feelings for Marina were mutual.
“Oh, but… my lease isn’t up…” Marina says then, straightening back up to her full height.
“So?” Pearl says, shooting Marina a look.
“Well, I’m already paying for something, not to mention I wouldn’t be using it…”
“Marina, baby.” Pearl starts. Marina blinks. “You’re, like, filthy rich, and there’s nothing about this house to pay for.”
“Oh. Right, I guess I am.” The octoling responds.
“Maybe property taxes… or something. I don’t really notice that leave my bank account, to be honest…” Pearl says, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
Marina giggles, clearly amused as ever by her girlfriend’s flippant attitude towards finances. “Alright, Pearlie, you got me.”
Pearl flashes Marina a smile, and places her hands on the octoling’s hips. “I hope you know this means I’m real serious about you, baby.”
A flustered smile of her own grows on Marina’s face, and she slings her arms across Pearl’s shoulders. “Yeah?” She says, cocking her head slightly.
“Oh yeah. I love you, my old man might love you more—that’s a joke by the way—and I want you in my life for a good and long time.”
“I love you too, Pearlie. I can’t imagine my life with anyone else.”
When Marina says it, Pearl can undoubtedly see forever in her eyes. And when she kisses her, she can taste the promise. And someday, she knows four years of knowing each other and four months of openly loving each other will feel like nothing but tiny slivers of time in comparison to the vast amount of years they’ll have spent together.
Later, after Marina goes back to her apartment to make preparations, Pearl calls her father. When she tells him the news, he only tells her that he’s surprised it took so long. That the way they were glued to each other when he visited had him thinking it was something that should have happened earlier. Pearl laughs and says that he’s the only person in the world that would tell them they’re moving too slow.
It’s all relative, though. When Marina does move in, it’s exactly as Pearl had been expecting. Nothing changes from the days long stays Marina would have at the house, only now it never ends. She finds herself smitten with the lighthearted arguments they have over interior decor, food placement in the fridge, and who folded the towels like that. She adores finding traces of Marina around the house, even more than she did before. It might not make complete sense to somebody looking in, but to Pearl they’re all just the little things that make it known that Marina has a stake in how things are around here. That she lives here now.
As such, with each passing day, Pearl just becomes more and more sure about the whole “forever” thing. If she ever even needed more convincing.