#suf angst

Third Set of Twins

Page One // Pages Two-Four

———

...

-SEMI SUF SPOILERS DO NOT WATCH IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED-

Normal balanced people when they saw the SUF leak-

“Well I’m scared for my boy...”

Me-

For @pennylogue.  After the events of Prickly Pair, Steven tries to clean his room, but finds a distraction.  Angst with a little bit of hope.

***

Shafts of moonlight played across the wooden floor, highlighting a minefield of cactus spines and wood chips.  Steven glared at the mess.  He ached from a day of helping the Gems start to clean up his house, largely in tense, uncomfortable silence, but there was no chance of him going to bed now.  He’d forgotten Cactus Steven had been up here, too.

Stubbornly he whisked a broom back and forth, collecting several spines into a pile.  The broom missed just as many as it collected, though, and Steven let out an irritated huff.  He thought longingly of getting into bed and sinking into sleep, but his cactus had ruined that too, hadn’t it?  His bed and comforter were encrusted with spikes.  He’d have to ask Dad to buy a new one.  Another mistake to fix.

He stripped the bedding from the bed, stuffing it into a garbage bag, ignoring the way his hands stung.  Spikes poked through the plastic trashbag.  He heaved the mattress off the bedframe to the side, and was startled to find a box wedged between the bed and the nightstand that he didn’t recognize.  

He opened up the box and slowly sank down to his knees.  Oh.  He’d forgotten about this.

Art supplies spilled out.  Markers, crayon, pencils, sketchbooks, pencil sharpeners shedding shavings everywhere.  He reached out and picked up a sketchbook, flipping through the pages.

He winced.  He knew he’d given up drawing for a reason.  His old drawings stared at him, clumsy things where he had barely been able to color inside the lines.  Pages of himself, a cheery round scribble in red and blue and black and yellow, tagging along beside figures he only vaguely recognized as the Gems.  A picture of Stevonnie riding a Lion-shaped blob into a field of crooked, uneven stars.  Way too many pages involving an intricate Dogcopter sequel with nearly illegible handwriting.  A few torn pages that he suddenly remembered had contained pictures for his dream wedding book, which made his chest ache.  A drawing of Tiger Millionaire and Purple Puma was especially horrible.

Great. Another thing he’d foolishly thought he was good at, like making friends, or growing plants, or helping other people. 

Still, though.  He remembered how proud he’d been of that Tiger Millionaire drawing.  The little details like the tie and the nose were actually discernible.  He’d tried shading in Purple Puma using some techniques he had learned from a manga how-to.  He remembered deciding it was finished, holding it up in the light to admire it, certain that it was amazing.

Steven sighed, then bit his lip.  Surrounded by broken bits of wood and cactus spines and a bare bed, he reluctantly picked up a red colored pencil.

Idly he sketched out a few scribbles.  He made a loose figure.  A person, arms, legs, face set in a grimace.  He put down the red, reached for pink.  Black.  Green in three different shades.  Black, goldenrod, violet.  His fingers were smudged in different colors.  His pencils seemed to be dulling rapidly -- or was it just that he was coloring so much, pressing too hard on the paper?  In the moonlight, it was hard to tell, but color bloomed beneath his hands.

He stopped, suddenly aware of how stiff his back had gotten while he was drawing.  The moonlight was halfway across the room now.

He looked down at his drawing.  The page radiated color, anger, pain.  Shadows of Cactus Steven, a smeared shape like a face yelling, flares of pink and black.  It was formless.  Ugly.  Violent.  

But it was his, and he gazed at it a long time.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat that way.  Or when the paper had gotten water spots on it.  He brushed them away with a color-streaked hand.

The moonlight had moved again.  He shifted, switching from a kneeling position to a cross-legged position, the sketchbook held in his lap.  He leaned against the stripped bedframe and let out a long breath, the broom and dustpan and garbage bag forgotten beside him.

Third Set of Twins

Page One // Pages Two-Four

———