September - Boredom
[You] pearlie
[You] pearlie hello
[You] what are you doing pearlie
[You] is it going ok
No reply yet, after forty minutes. Must be a long meeting. Marina grumbles softly to herself and sinks further into her blankets. Pearl’s working today, talking to their agent about potentially waiting a bit longer before scheduling concerts after Marina lays their clutch, so of course she’s probably not going to respond for a while.
Instead, she blinks and considers her options. She’s alone in the house; what sort of things can she do while she’s alone in the house?
She could play music loud, but Pearl already doesn’t mind when she does that, and it hurts her ears anyway. Maybe she can cook, but also that takes energy and her baby bump might get in the way.
She hasn’t streamed in a while… but she also hasn’t set up Haruko’s room yet.
Well there’s an idea right there- stream herself setting it up, putting together the crib, decorating- but there’s no good way to hide the fact she’s pregnant if she’s putting together a nursery. Nobody will believe her if she says she’s somewhere else either, given how big her baby is now.
Maybe she’ll stream tonight and spend the day working.
Marina climbs out of bed and stretches with a satisfied sigh. With a newfound spring in her step, she makes her way to the kitchen and puts together a simple breakfast- frozen waffles out of the toaster, with chocolate chips and whipped cream, despite the clock reading noon- while she considers what Pearl might be up to.
She’s probably in some stuffy meeting… Marina’s never enjoyed those meetings, and she knows Pearl doesn’t either.
Her wife can work magic with the right phrasing, however. Marina is book-smart, sure, but Pearl has always been people-smart. Marina, for example, wouldn’t be able to get the schedule for their next concert shifted forward a couple weeks so that it can happen in January instead of at the end of December. She wouldn’t be able to convince her agent that she needs a little more time to rest.
But Pearl can. And she will, Marina knows she will.
Pearl would put someone in the ground for Marina. She’s always been protective like that, more so now than ever. It might be a new-parent inkling thing, or it might be a Pearl thing. Marina isn’t sure.
Marina hums, for a moment, and pauses. Hopefully Pearl doesn’t start any fights over her. She doubts she will, of course, but she knows her Pearlie likes to threaten.
Then again, Pearl still knows when it’s a bad time to throw a punch.
She shudders a little at the thought of Pearl fist-fighting someone at work and forces her mind elsewhere by picking up her phone and opening whatever social media catches her eye first. It’s most of the same, though; inane fandom discourse Marina can never bring herself to care about, people complaining about games, and sometimes a funny meme or two.
She’ll reblog a couple of those memes, maybe an article or two about whether or not she’s actually pregnant- one for yes and one for no, of course, because people trying desperately to get an answer from her is very entertaining- before she finally gets bored. Maybe she should start working now, especially considering that she’s finished breakfast.
Marina picks herself up from the table and puts her plate in the sink before she makes her way to what was once the guest bedroom. It’s long since been cleared out with no help from Marina herself, since both Pearl and her doctor forbid her from lifting anything heavy (what a strange feeling), but nothing’s been set up inside yet.
The walls are painted a soft seafoam green and the floor is covered in pastel blue carpet. Already, a few decorations have been hung up, little stickers with nudibranchs and seaweed on the walls and stars on strings hanging from the ceiling. All of their toys are piled around, gear still in boxes, except the fancy new recliner Pearl bought new just for her, situated comfortably in the corner.
She sits in the recliner while she considers where to start. The logical answer would be the crib, she thinks, so Marina picks herself up again, grabs her little tool bag, and pulls the crib’s box over to the floor under the window.
The room is quiet, save for Marina pulling all of the parts from the box and tossing it to the side. A few minutes into her work, she pulls her phone from her pocket to play a video and break the silence.
Between screwing pieces together and briefly considering whether she’d like to hammer nails in them instead, she wonders what her baby might look like. She knows Haruko will probably be tall, and Pearl has made peace with that, but she wonders if she’ll ever get too tall for her wife to carry around.
Then again… Pearl could just make her go into swim form like she does Marina. It’s pretty easy, just ask her, or massage the back of her neck in just the right way and she flips over without even realizing it.
But she hasn’t gone into swim form in a while; apparently, pregnant inklings can’t go into swim form, so Marina has had to watch Pearl try desperately to carry her without it. She feels bad, even though Pearl insists she’s been working out to get stronger just to lift her.
Yesterday she brought Marina from her desk to their bed to tell her to sleep, one of the most impressive things she’s ever done. She thinks back on that while she tightens a few more screws on the legs of the crib; if Pearl came in and saw her working, what would she do? Try and drag Marina away from it? Watch her every movement?
Maybe both, somehow. Convince her to wait and let Pearl do it, but she’s already started so she’ll finish anyway. Besides, Pearl probably won’t be home for hours. Plenty of time to work uninterrupted.
It’s fairly simple to build the crib, put its little mattress in it, and fill it with plushes and pillows and blankets. Perfectly neat even though she knows full well that neatness won’t even last a full month.
Neither will it being in a different room, actually,she thinks while looking at the door. Sure, she can keep the egg nearby by holding it in her tentacles, but once Haruko hatches… well, the crib will have come to the side of the bed. It has wheels, thankfully, despite them technically not being needed by then. Marina will likely be allowed to pick things up again. Maybe.
Her doctor has been quite strict with her, as though she knew Marina enjoyed things like weightlifting and working with heavyweight inksport weapons just by looking at her.
It’s odd, being told to wait a while before continuing her work, but she’s replaced it with other activities. In the past five months alone, for example, she’s finished more books than she ever has before, completed an entire Pokédex within a month (because a new game came out, and she’ll never skip a Pokémon game), learned to speedrun Minecraft and subsequently break the game to get times under ten seconds, so on and so forth.
She does miss Ammo Knights, though. Hopefully Sheldon’s nephew Donny is taking good care of it while she’s on leave. She’s proud of that kid, and she does trust him, but she can’t help but worry he’ll mess up the very particular way she likes her store laid out.
That’s a problem for later, though. Right now she’s pulling things from boxes and setting them up. Toys get put in toy bins, a carrier is put next to Marina’s recliner, and clothes are folded and put into a small dresser.
Her phone buzzes then, right as she closes the last drawer.
[pearlie <3] SRRY BABE my phone was on silent and i forgot to turn it off after the meeting I wondered why you weren’t texting me!!! I LOVE YOU AND HARUKO SO MUCCHHH
She chuckles to herself- of course Pearl forgot to turn off “do not disturb” mode. Marina makes sure to send her a photo of the nursery, and Pearl floods her phone with declarations of how amazing and neat and beautiful it is but also Marina had better not have lifted anything too heavy.
[You] i didn’t honey :) promise
[pearlie <3] OKAY…… im watchin you
[You] haha, okay
Marina puts her phone back in her pocket and makes sure to leave the nursery’s curtains open while she goes downstairs to wait for Pearl on the couch, ready to crush her in a hug.