GREG'D

Pearl hiked the bag full of craft supplies a bit higher on her shoulder as she sorted through her keys. Greg's birthday was coming up and, seeing as Steven had been called to the diamond authority on "urgent matters," Pearl and the other gems offered to set up a little surprise party in his absence.
Amethyst, naturally, had been tasked with acquiring food and refreshments. A variety of foul-smelling human soporifics had already filled the kitchen island and she'd be out the rest of the day retrieving various snacks, entrees, and desserts, which Pearl expected to keep her quite busy.
Garnet was handling the invitations. Hand-delivering the eloquent little envelopes was little trouble for the leader of the Crystal Gems, as she could easily trace the routes of their recipients through her predictive visions. Even still, the task would likely take her the better part of the day.
This left Pearl herself to handle decorations. Not that she minded; the opportunity to turn Amethyst's vision of the "rager" into a more classy affair- at least in appearance- felt like a blessing. A bit of crepe paper here, a nice hand-painted banner there and the party would look absolutely gorgeous, in spite of the purple gem's rather uncivilized intentions.
Pearl slipped into the house and payed little mind to the pleasant guitar playing coming from the living room. Surely Steven was just brushing up on his-
The bag dropped to the floor as the realization struck her.
Steven was on Homeworld.
Pearl drew her spear without a second thought; whipping around and pressing the blade to the intruder's neck.
"Who are you?! How did you get in here?!"
The rail-thin man threw his hands up in surender, his eyes going wide behind circular glasses.
"Pearl, wait, wait- it's me!"
The voice sounded immediately familiar. A bit deeper and more gravely than the one she knew- likely a smoker- but the similarity was clear. In spite of the short ponytail and rather vintage fashion sense, Pearl almost swore she was looking at-
"Greg! Jesus, it's Pearl!" The intruder suddenly shouted to another standing in a doorway to her right. Pearl quickly redirected her spear in this "Greg's" direction, finding a muscular man dressed in a Beach City police uniform training a pistol on her chest. She noted straight away that one of his arms was a prosthetic. Similar to the first, there was something oddly familiar about him. His head was clean-shaven, though his face sported a thick moustache. Reflective aviator sunglasses obscured the man's eyes, but there was little doubt in her mind that they too were brown.
"Greg" relaxed with a long sigh upon seemingly recognizing Pearl, quickly holstering his sidearm and raising a hand to her.
"Christ, sorry about that Pearl. We're all just a little jumpy-"
The sound of two hammers locking back turned everyone's attention to the sliding glass door in the kitchen.
"Guy can't even get a smoke in- what the hell'd you get your gun out for?"
In spite of the slight twang and a gruff timber, this voice was no less familiar than the other two: it was Greg's. This version held a beat-up double barrel sawed down to handgun size.
The impliment was clutched in two large, rough looking hands attached to massive arms covered in sleeves of tattoos. His physique was roughly the same as the Greg she knew, built, however, with the sort of muscle one gets from hard labor rather than intentional training. His similarly balding hair was cropped short, but long sideburns connected into a mutton chop-style beard that connected at the upper lip. This man appeared to be dressed in typical blue-collar work clothes: blue jeans, steel-toed boots, and a navy button up with an oval name patch reading "Greg" on the left breast pocket.
"I just didn't recognize- wait, why the hell do you have a gun?" The officer to Pearl's right inquired with a cocked brow.
"Personal protection; case n' point." The mechanic nodded at the scene before him, lowering the hammers and slipping the hefty piece back into a shoulder holster beneath his overshirt.
"That thing had better be registered."
"You know goddamn well it ain't."
"Gentlemen!" The man in a tweed jacket seated on the couch waved his hands to silence his compatriots. "The guns are away, can we please settle down now? I'm sure we've already frightened the living hell out of Pearl."
The tattooed man snorted and elbowed the officer. "Ah man, Delt- we went and spooked Gam's wife."
"Beta, would you kindly shut up?" The one apparently known as 'Gam' glared at the chuckling pair before turning his attention to the bewildered Pearl.

"Right, I suppose we should begin with introductions and apologies." Gam smiled awkwardly as he extended a hand. "My name is Greg, though for the sake of everyone's sanity, I'm referred to as Gamma." Pearl hesitantly stored her spear and shook the man's hand. "The inked-up fellow with the shotgun in his shirt, for... whatever reason, goes by Beta, and our friendly officer there beside him is Delta." The two shot Pearl a curt wave before rounding the sectional and sitting across from her and Gamma. "We're not quite sure how we all ended up here so, naturally, we went in search of Rose. Instead, we found Alpha- er, sorry, Greg- parked down the beach from your temple. We elected to wait here for one of you, as I understand that Rose was the mother in this timeline, correct?"
Pearl stared blankly at the man sitting beside her. "...Mother?"
"Oh, of Steven, yes."
"Is... is that not the case where you've come from?"
Gamma held his tongue a moment as he tried to pair down three love stories- three lifetimes- into an explanation brief and coherent enough to help Pearl make sense of the situation. It certainly didn't help that the love of his life he hadn't seen in seventeen years was sitting directly in front of him, looking as radiant and beautiful as the day he'd fallen for her. That soft, elegant voice threatened to lull to sleep the man of reason in his mind that was desperately shouting that this was not his Pearl; that she would never remember the memories they shared.
Gamma was certain he was about to make a grave mistake when the hiss of a screen door rang out like the beating wings of his guardian angel.
"Alright, got a case of Millbrew, but they were out of Sim's Pale, so I just got some- oh, uh, hey Pearl... see ya' met the guys."
In the ensuing silence, Beta wasted no time getting to his feet and distributing a can to each Greg in the room. "Alright, way I see it, we gotta lot of bullshit to chew through here and nothin' but time." He cracked open the foamy beverage and raised a toast. "So, let's relax, have a beer, and tell Pearl what's-what. Sound good?"
The others tapped their drinks against Beta's and downed a few good gulps. Pearl couldn't help but notice the uniformity in the way they went about drinking; everything from the number of swallows to the direction they wiped the foam away from their lips was nearly identical.
"Now, who's gonna start us off?"

"No, no, twins, not just Steven. See?" Delta pulled his wallet from his back pocket and opened a flap containing a family photo. Indeed, there was a half-smiling Steven with long, straight hair nearly covering his eyes and his wildly-grinning sister Nora with poofy, curly hair barely restrained in an equally wild ponytail. "Rose was saying it was because she was a fusion. Steven there got Sapphire's gem and his sister got Ruby's. You should've seen how happy those kids were the day they learned to fuse."
Pearl had trouble believing her eyes. Sure, Beta and Amethyst made sense- it was no surprise the former member of a marauding badland motorcycle gang would catch her eye- but Garnet and Greg? Perhaps it only seemed outlandish when considering the laid back rocker she'd known; Delta was certainly a different sort. Come to think of it, the gruff ex-soldier turned straight-edge cop with an zeal for personal health and fitness seemed rather up Garnet's alley. The story of their chance meeting on the beach after she returned the prosthetic arm he'd lost during a run showed a surprisingly soft side to the notoriously reserved leader of the crystal gems.
"Would anyone like another beer? Think I'm going to get a fresh one." Gamma pushed himself up by the knobby knees protruding from his khakis. Each member of the group nearly simultaneously requested another in an ongoing trend of being rather in sync with one another. "Pearl? Want a drink? You folks seem pretty stocked-up in the kitchen. How about a mule?"
Pearl cocked her head as if he'd just spoken to her in French. "A... mule?"
Gamma returned her confused gaze. "Moscow Mule? Your favorite?"
"I don't think I've ever... I don't typically drink... or eat, for that matter."
Gamma smiled, undeterred. "One moment. If you hate it, Beta will gladly drink it."
"Goddamn right." The mountain of a man chuckled, distributing the second round of beers himself while Gamma set about recreating his wife's go-to beverage a timeline or two over.
A minute or two later, the lanky man returned with a tall glass filled with clear liquid, ice, and a lime. Pearl eyed the drink with curiosity and a bit of apprehension. She'd never much been a fan of alcohol- not that she'd ever tried it, in spite of Amethyst's slurred insistence that it was "fuckin' awesome"- but Gamma's nostalgic gaze edged her forth just enough to take a brief sip.
The strangely pleasant aroma certainly caught Pearl off guard, but it was the sensations and the complex flavor that absolutely blew her away. It was as if, for a brief moment, she'd been taken to that strange parallel universe where some odd version version of herself would delicately sip such a beverage in the company of her loving husband and the intellectual company he kept at some artistic venue. Perhaps it was a benefit for the university or yet another art show Gamma had been graciously asked to curate. His refined tastes and eloquent speaking undoubtedly made him quite popular in the world of art, though his true passions lay in music. A professor of music theory; her husband, Greg, was a professor of music theory at the most prestigious university in-
"I had a feeling you'd like it! Another one?"
Pearl glanced down at the suddenly empty glass in her hands. Even by the standards of absolute sobriety, Pearl was a bit of a lightweight. The single drink, downed quickly as she had, already brought a delightful fuzz to her thoughts. Surely she needed to pace herself- how embarassing would it be to end up drunk in front of...
She hadn't noticed just how many empty cans had begun to crowd the table. The four men had nearly polished off the first case of beer and were only just beginning to loosen up. Innocent stories of their children's antics had steadily turned to the wild days spent with the mothers. Surely another drink couldn't hurt.
Pearl smiled and handed Gamma her glass. "If you don't mind? That really was lovely." With a wink that made her heart inexplicably skip a beat, the professor returned to the kitchen and started work on a second so-called "Moscow Mule"
What was a "Moscow," anyway?

"No way in Hell am I telling you that." Delta's grin quite clearly indicated the answer to Beta's raunchy inquiry. Gamma's fingertips rubbed circles in his temples with embarrassment while Pearl tried her best to mask her tipsy giggles behind the back of her hand.
"You're really gonna sit there and pretend you never asked Garn for a threesome. Really." Beta fought back his own laughter as he attempted to make the question sound as matter-of-fact as possible.
"Never asked for one."
"But you got one, though eh?"
Delta's silence behind a long sip of his beer made the entire room burst into laughter. Greg nearly fell out of his chair while Pearl finally relented and set her glass down to fully cover her mouth. This version of Garnet was certainly adventurous, if the line of questioning was anything to go by. Frankly, every one of these alternate Crystal Gems seemed to be. Perhaps it was Greg's influence that led to such defections from the norm; the way it had with Rose.
"Couple times."
"Aha, birthday?"
Delta shrugged and gave his can an inquisitive swirl, noting he'd soon need another.
"Birthdays, Christmas, promotions. Shit, she won just about every fight we ever had; I could never stay mad at her when the two of em started tugging me to bed with those big, needy eyes." Delta joined the rest of the room's laughter with fond recollection. "Hey, pass me another, would ya' Greg?"
All three men instinctively started towards the case of beer before remembering that only Alpha held that title. Greg gave a click of his tongue as the last can was tossed to Delta.
"At a crossroads here guys: no beer, just a whole lotta hard stuff."
All three doppelgangers shrugged as Gamma got to his feet.
"Ah, what the hell? It's not like we've got anywhere to be, right? What're you all having?"
"Whiskey on ice; cheapest shit ya' got." Beta called after him.
"Alright, Delta?"
"Eh, just get me a gin and tonic."
"What're you, watchin' your figure?" Beta tossed an elbow at him and recieved a firm but jovial slug in the shoulder.
"Okay, okay, Greg?"
"That whiskey on ice sounds good. Just, uh, something above shatterproof, please."
"Got it. Darling? Another-"
Gamma was blushing like mad at the habitual pet name. Caught just a moment to late. The shocked silence in the room was finally broken as Pearl rattled the ice in her glass.
"Another Mule, darling? if you please~"