#summer bash

It was honestly one of the best things that could have happened to the two of them. 

True, the manner in which that information finally came to light could have been better, but that was neither here nor there now. 

Speaking of the former general… 

The door to Yellow’s rooms slid open almost silently, allowing Blue to peek her head in. 

Yellow was sitting at her desk, tweezers in hand, and carefully placing tiny fragments of a gem back together. Slow, tedious work that made Blue’s back hurt just watching her sit hunched over at the desk.

She waited until Yellow had finished affixing the tiny shard she was currently working on to the rest of the assembled gem before making her presence known

“Hello, Yellow,” she called, smiling when the golden gem jerked up straight, turning to look at her.

“Oh, Blue, I didn’t hear you come in.” She set the tweezers down and turned around in her chair to face her, standing and stretching her arms over her head. 

There was no telling how long she had been cooped up in here.

“How long have you been sitting here working?” she asked as she moved across the room toward Yellow, still straightening herself out.

“Not terribly long…” She glanced at Blue but her gaze quickly flittered over to some of the plants sitting in the large windows beside her workspace. She reached out to fiddle with their long green leaves.  

“How long is ‘not terribly’ exactly?” One brow cocked upward in silent accusation.

“Just a few… rotations,” she admitted after a brief pause to look at her counterpart's face. 

Blue merely rolled her eyes, letting out an almost imperceptible sigh, but the way Yellow’s face drew up into a frown made it clear she had heard her exasperation with her. 

“Come with me.” She held out a hand. “You need a break and I wish to show you something.” 

“I still have a lot of work to do here, Blue…” She looked at the desk covered in shard fragments. “Much to fix…,” she trailed off. 

“You have an eternity to fix it, darling. Take a break and come with me.” She continued to hold her hand out patiently. 

Yellow hesitated only a second before taking Blue’s hand and allowing the other diamond to gently tug her along.

"Where are we going?" Yellow asked as Blue let her down the winding halls. 

“You’ll see in a moment.” Blue smiled at her over her shoulder and Yellow hummed in response, allowing herself to be led. 

They eventually found themselves in the ballroom where a host of gems were running around, decorating the walls.

“What are they doing?” Yellow glanced around at the gems happily running around the room.

“Decorating for the ball,” Blue said with a smile, prompting Yellow to look at her with wide eyes.

“A ball?” This was the first time she’d heard anything of the kind. 

“Yes.” Blue turned to her, looking more than a little excited. “This will be nothing like the balls of the past, not nearly so formal. Were going to celebrate the one good thing the empire has always had.” 

Yellow looked at her expectantly and Blue couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the former general. For all her razor wit and incredible intelligence, she could be a little dense at times. 

“Music, Yellow. Singing and dancing,” she explained. “Steven and I have spoken at length about it and he agrees, we should be celebrating the parts of our culture that bind us together.” She held her hands out at the room filled with gems moving here and there, preparing the room.

Unlike in the past, where gems did what they were told with a robotic stiffness, the gems moving about their feet were light and happy. Chattering excitedly as they worked toward something they seemed to be looking forward to. 

"That sounds lovely, Blue." Yellow couldn’t help but smile at Blue’s enthusiasm and the contagious joy of the gems moving about underfoot.

"Doesn't it though? It's going to be so exciting, nothing like any ball that's ever been thrown here before!" She clapped her hands together excitedly.

"I'm sure it will be.” Yellow agreed before Blue launched into a long, excited explanation of what she and Steven had spoken about for this event. 

Yellow was content to silently watch her counterpart as she animatedly spoke, face lighting up with the kind of joy and excitement that was incredibly rare for Blue, even in Era three.

After several long minutes, she seemed to realize she was rambling and stopped, folding her arms into her sleeves. 

“But yes, it should be quite enjoyable…" She cleared her throat before turning to look at Yellow. "Steven said that on Earth it’s customary for attendees to ask someone to go to events such as this with them, as a sort of romantic outing…,” she trailed off.

The golden gem crossed her arms, as she looked at Blue, carefully keeping her face neutral as much as her lips desperately wanted to pull into a knowing grin. 

She knew exactly what Blue was waiting for, she could tell just by the lilt to the statement and the look she was currently leveling on her. She was waiting for Yellow to ask her to accompany her.

“Interesting…,” was all she said instead, trying her hardest not to look amused by the sudden drop of Blue’s shoulders and the dip in her brows, but she knew to end the game before Blue’s exasperation turned into something else.

"Perhaps the two of us should attend together then?" she suggested and allowed herself to finally smile when Blue lit up, diamond-shaped, cobalt iris’s shining.   

“What a lovely idea...” Blue wrapped an arm around her elbow and pulled her close. It was all Yellow could do not to roll her eyes but smiled nonetheless.

~ ~ ~

The moment Yellow stuck her head into the ballroom the night of the event, She could immediately tell that this would not be like any gathering they had had before. 

The cavernous room was filled to the brim with happy chatting gems, all intermingling. 

She had yet to see Blue, White or Spinal, and even in a large room, there was no way to miss The other two diamonds, so it was safe to assume they had not yet arrived.

She would have come with Blue but She had insisted that she had a few things that she needed to finish before she arrived and had sent Yellow on ahead to the party.

The goal in the evening was to enjoy themselves among their former subjects, not tower over them. 

Blue had insisted that Yellow shrink the three of them down so as to better blend in and not cause too much of a scene, nor accidentally crush or step on anyone in the crowd as they occasionally had a tendency to do. 

Yellow had done so, though she didn't care for it. Changing other’s forms? Trivial, but she didn't much care for changing her own to such a smaller shape, but it was one evening and it made Blue happy, so she would hold her tongue and deal with it.

She had shrunk down Blue before she had left but she had yet to see White.

She spotted Steven from across the room, chatting with a Kyanite she recognized as being a former member of Blue's court. She quickly made her way over to him, sidestepping through the crowd, most didn’t spare her a glance as she made her way across the room but there were a few that stopped to stare once they realized it was her. She nodded to them but didn’t stop till she was standing at the youngest diamond’s side.

“Yellow!” Steven smiled at her when he saw her and it was contagious. Yellow was more than aware that for a span of time Steven didn’t want much to do with them, and when she looked at it objectively, she couldn’t blame him. 

Since he had started traveling, they saw him only rarely, but he always seemed glad to see them when they did.

“This is a much better party than the last one we had in here.” He looks up at her knowingly and Yellow can’t help but agree with that statement, he did end up in the tower the last time.

“That I would have to agree on,” Yellow said, crossing her arms. 

They stood and chatted a while before Spinel appeared and began talking the young diamond’s ear off, followed by White, whom Yellow had to quickly shrink down before she caused a scene among the gems. 

It was around this time that music began to play. Something totally unfamiliar to the former general and she knew it had to be something from Earth by the way Steven and the rest of the crystal gems jumped up and hurried to the dance floor.

“So silly…” a lilting voice was suddenly in her ear, making her jump. She looked over her shoulder to find Blue, smiling at her.

“I was starting to wonder when you would arrive.” Yellow crossed her arms over her chest in exaggerated annoyance.

“I had some last-minute things that required my attention; I hope you weren’t waiting long?” She looped one arm through one of Yellow’s crossed arms, forcing her to drop them. 

“No, I was just…  observing…,” she hummed, looking around the ballroom at all the happy gems twirling about the floor to the beat of the foreign music.

It was probably the first time this room had seen any real joy since it was built.

“They look like they’re having so much fun…,” Blue said, watching them dance, and there was a certain lilt to her voice that Yellow recognized right away as longing, and a moment later she proved it by tugging on her arm.

“Come dance with me, Yellow.” She smiled, moving in the direction of the dance floor. 

Yellow stiffened, a feeling of panic jolting straight through her core. 

“Blue, no…” She frowned, glancing around the room at the many gems that moved around them and pulled her arm out of her grip.

Blue blinked in surprise as Yellow quickly stepped away with the mumbled excuse of needing to go and check on something before disappearing into the crowd without a second glance, leaving her standing there, stunned.

What had just happened?

When she finally shook off her shock at being snuffed by the other diamond she quickly followed, moving deftly through the crowed of rambunctious gems. Many of them, upon recognizing her, was quick to move out of the way, but Yellow might as well have vanished into thin air.

She spent the majority of the ball looking for the golden gem before finally finding her, not in the ballroom but back in her own room, once again returned to her normal size.  

“Yellow!” Blue frowned, calling up to her counterpart. 

Yellow jerked, turning to look down, finding Blue starring up at her with a less than pleased expression. She pursed her lips, she expected Blue would come looking for her but she hadn’t anticipated that it would be so soon.

“Return me to my normal size…” The way she said it and the way she was looking up at her with her hands squarely on her hips made Yellow not want to do that, but she knew that it would only delay the inevitable.

She rubbed her fingers together, creating the familiar glowing static before she reached down and touched Blue’s gem, and quickly the other diamond was returned to her former size, though the frown on her face remained the same.

“If you didn’t wish to come to the ball you didn’t have to,” Blue finally said after a long moment of holding Yellow’s gaze.  

“Of course I wanted to come, Blue.” Yellow finally sighed, reaching up to rub her temples. 

“So you simply didn’t wish to dance with me?” She asked instead, the expression on her face turning hurt.

“Of course I want to dance with you!” Yellow jumped up out of her seat, startling the other diamond, but she quickly recovered and frowned.

“Then why are you acting like this!” she shouted, scowling. “We've danced together before…” 

“I know…” Yellow frowned, her gaze turning to somewhere over Blue’s shoulder before mumbling something.

“What?” Blue leaned forward. 

“I didn’t want to dance in front of them,” she finally admitted with a sigh, rubbing her temples. Blue waited, knowing Yellow as she did, she knew an explanation was coming.

“The last time we danced together… we became Green,” Yellow reminded her, and Blue blinked. She had nearly forgotten that. They had been alone in her rooms when Yellow had pulled her into her arms and they had swayed slowly to a tune that neither one of them could hear, just felt, and the next thing either of them knew, they were no longer themselves but someone altogether new and not at the same time.

It hadn't lasted very long, but they had both decided they wanted to further explore this in their own time, of which there was plenty. 

“Oh,” she mumbled.

“It’s not that I don’t want to dance with you or… fuse,” she managed to push out that last word, one that in many ways was still foreign to her. “ I just… not in front of all of them…” She waved a hand in the general direction of the ballroom, mouth scrunching into a tight line. 

It was easy for Blue to see the emotional frustration that tended to bubble up just beneath the surface in her counterpart. 

“It’s alright, Yellow.” She reached out and grabbed one gloved hand, putting the golden gems’ attention squarely on her. “I understand…” she quietly assured with a squeeze. 

“I’m sorry about the ball…” 

“Don’t be, I have a feeling there will be more,” Blue assured her with a gentle smile and squeeze of her hand. “Though...If you’re truly contrite, I have an idea of how you could begin making things up to me…” She tugged on Yellow’s hand and the message seemed to come across when her free arm wrapped around Blue’s waist.