It's Alright - BritishSquidward - SpongeBob SquarePants (Cartoon) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

It had been a hard day at the Krusty Krab - that’s how Squidward would’ve described it; a hard, horrible, horrendous day. He was so tired by the end of it that he couldn’t even will himself to even dive into the depths of his “advanced” vocabulary in order to source the words for a better description. It was just plain old awful. Of course, working at the Krusty Krab was always awful, but today was especially awful.

Squidward had never seen it so busy, though it was probably related to the convention that Mr Krabs had mentioned was happening later that day. Some gathering to do with fast food founding fathers? …Something or other, Squidward didn’t care. Then again, if it meant more work, maybe he did.

The best part was probably the moment when Mr Krabs announced he was leaving the restaurant early and SpongeBob was to come with him, so he could prepare for the convention, and so he could show SpongeBob the security measures at his house. Squidward had snorted at that. He doubted Mr Krabs had any kind of security installed, unless you counted a mousefish trap precariously positioned on the step by the front door. His suspicions had been mostly confirmed when he overheard Mr Krabs describing some kind of baseball bat to SpongeBob, but he wasn’t surprised, not when they were talking about that crustaceous cheapskate.

Though! He’d been excited they were leaving, and only naturally thought that this meant Krabs was shutting up shop for the rest of the day. This of course meant two hours of bliss at home instead of breaking his back in this grease bucket. His hopes were soon dashed, however, when his boss revealed that he was to stay behind and run the place by himself. Taking the orders, cooking the patties, waiting on the tables, dealing with customer complaints, and locking up securely once he was done.

“Keep the place ship-shape, Mister Squidward!” Krabs had exclaimed, tossing him the spare keys, and putting a claw around SpongeBob to guide him out the door.

I know what I’d like to do with the place. Squidward had thought bitterly, glaring them out of the Krusty Krab with narrowed eyes.

The next two hours had been a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, Squidward was exhausted, and while they may be one of the worst forms of dreams, he’d like to get to having one, he decided, in the midst of trudging up the stairs of his house with the last of his energy.

“Hnnghh…” he groaned, flopping onto his bed face-first, subsequently allowing the exhaustion to drag him to sleep.

It must have been, what, five minutes, before he was awoken by some loud banging at the door. Squidward’s eyes snapped open, all blood-shot and furious; one good night’s sleep - one! That’s all he asks!

“SpongeBob…” he seethed under his breath, getting out of bed and marching downstairs, where he finally came to a halt at the door, “You better have a good reason for this!” he scolded, tone raised, as he grabbed the door handle, “Or I swear to Neptune, I’m going to-”

He yanked the door open, poised and ready to yell so loudly that he could already feel the sore throat coming on… and stopped, as he’d come face to face with very much not SpongeBob. Pearl stood fairly sedentary on his doorstep, drenched from the rain. Water was dripping from her skin and already damp hair, but still did little to hide the tears that streamed down her cheeks, mixed with her mascara, and diluted it out. His expression softened.

“Pearl-”

“No, it’s… fine, Uncle Squiddy. If I’m being that much of a bother, I can go.”

“No- NO!” he reached out to put a comforting tentacle on her shoulder, “I’m sorry, Pearl, I didn’t mean to yell, I. I’ve had a tough day, and I thought you were SpongeBob.”

“Ew,” she shuddered. Pearl was okay with SpongeBob for the most part, but imagining having that bad a fashion sense had her recoiling.

Squidward snorted. “Right,” he agreed, stepping aside, and holding open the door, “Come in, though.”

Pearl was quick to take him up on this offer. The poor whale was practically drenched through and through, and being as big as she was, it was not really the best day to bet on Squidward’s floor being bone dry. He made a mental note to dry it up in a moment when he was not otherwise preoccupied.

As he guided her toward the stairs, a trail of water dripped onto the floor behind them, prompting Squidward to frown. “You’re soaked,” he helpfully observed, which - thanks a lot, Squidward, not sure she had already noticed.

Shuddering, Pearl nodded in agreement. “I got locked out.”

That was… Well, Squidward was unsure how to feel. He certainly didn’t want to jump to conclusions without further questioning, but with the situation as it was presently laid out to him, it was looking like he and Eugene were going to be having a serious talk sometime soon.

“Let’s get you dry, first off,” he said, holding back on his determination to get to the bottom of this - what looked like - mistreatment, prioritising Pearl’s health.

She nodded again, and said nothing more, par a few occasional sniffles. Squidward lead her to the bathroom, where he left her next to the radiator along with one of his comfiest towels, something she was endlessly grateful for. Whilst she dried off, he went to fetch some of the spare clothes she had left the last time she was here, tucked away in a small box at the bottom of his wardrobe, there in the first place in case she for some reason had to stay over on short notice. And it was hard to cut the notice shorter than this.

Squidward went to remove the cardboard lid, but found himself cut off by his own yawn. Right. He’d barely gotten any sleep, had he? But this was an issue to worry about later, he figured, retrieving the neatly folded clothes and balancing them over his arm efficiently, leaving no time wasted. With this completed, he headed back to the bathroom.

By this point, Pearl had managed to mostly dry herself off, and had taken to leaning against the radiator. The towel around her shoulders acted as a muffler between herself and the heat being emitted, preventing any chance of burning. Not that the fixture was particularly hot anyway - it was more medium, as far as radiator heat goes. Still, it was enough, and any warmth at all was helping greatly. Pearl closed her eyes, just letting the feeling run through her, tingling highly where she was in direct contact, and focusing on how the fuzziness ran low the further you got away. She closed her eyes. It’d been a bit of an ordeal that night, and she didn’t exactly feel like chatting, or absorbing any information for that matter, visual or otherwise.

Despite feeling completely drained of her social battery after the recent events, Pearl still found herself feeling glad once her adoptive uncle returned with a fresh change of much cosier-looking clothes. Placing them over the towel railing for her, Squidward explained that she was free to use the hairdryer too once ready. Pearl listened, nodding along, but found herself unable to properly focus on what he was saying, as her brain seemed more entwined with the question of why he had a hairdryer in the first place. Squidward did have some… insecurities regarding his appearance, so she supposed it made sense, to an extent. He also kept hairbrushes and other similar things, so whether these were actually for her or they were they so he could pretend he still had hair, she didn’t know, and decided she wouldn’t ask.

The last thing Squidward mentioned before he left her to get changed was that she should meet him downstairs, where they could talk. Pearl agreed, and got on with what she had to do.

Once finished, Pearl made her way down the stairs, taking each step as carefully as she could and somehow still managed to make quite the racket. Not that she could help it with those massive boots she liked wearing so much, though.

In the living room, she found Squidward already seated on the sofa, flipping through a magazine. He must’ve spotted something interesting, because he took a red pen and circled something - probably a programme he liked. Then, he stopped to yawn. The other frowned - did she interrupt his sleep? Was she preventing him from it? Was she a bother? A whirlwind of questions blew around relentlessly within her brain, taunting and torturing her with different unfair scenarios, all of which caused poor Squidward having to go out of his way, for her. For a moment she wondered if he was staring at the magazine to ignore her, but this was soon debunked when he noticed Pearl was in the room, and placed both items aside.

Pearl sat down beside him, revelling in the soft, fluffy cushioning beneath her. It had been a while since she’d sat on a comfortable chair (she wasn’t sure of the beanbag in her room counted, and to be fair, she’d not used that much recently since it’d split; or, well, she’d been told it had split, but it was starting to look like her dad had cut it on purpose in order to repurpose the beans).

Squidward broke the silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s not much to tell.” It was the truth, too. She’d gotten back from her friend’s house, found the door locked, and not been let in. Besides, she didn’t want to bother him even more. She continued, “I got locked out and Daddy thought I was a burglar.”

The cephalopod scowled. “Moron,” he muttered, before raising his tone to an audible level, “At least you’re dry now, I suppose - and you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like a drink? Hot chocolate?”

“Please.”

Squidward nodded, hoisting himself up with the help of his hands against his knees, and made his way over to the kitchen to get it started. Pearl could tell he knew this suggestion may work, and it had; hot chocolate was very favourite, after all. She could “coral spice latte” her way through school, but he knew that deep down she cared for the classics. In a way, it was sweet. Almost as much as the drink itself.

Pearl smiled to herself, not saying anything else other than a polite agreement to Squidward’s offer to watch television once he got back. That ought to take her mind off things, at least.

It wasn’t long before Squidward returned with a cup of hot chocolate for her, and some tea for himself. Setting the mugs down on the coffee table, he took the spare moment this gave of being hands-free to sit down and reach for the remote control.

“So,” he pondered, “whatchya fancy? ‘The Love Boat’?”

Pearl spoke up eagerly, “Yes, please.”

‘The Love Boat’ had been trending a year or two back - most shows did when they first came out on a channel, but had since died down. Now liking it was considered “not coral”, and Pearl definitely didn’t want to be perceived as such, so often kept talking about her real interests to herself. It was different when she was with Squidward, though. He didn’t judge her. He listened.

He had even taken the liberty of watching the first two seasons with her on her first rewatch, and found himself quite enjoying it. Of course, this only meant there was a plethora of in-jokes between them.

Squidward pulled up the menu screen on his television (in all honesty, he was still trying to work out all these new functions, but he was trying his best), and began searching for the show. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Pearl reach for her drink, and grinned.

“Careful, Lisa,” he teased, not making an effort to hide the proud smirk on his face for making a reference.

Pearl snorted, which soon turned into a full laugh. “Stop!” she pushed him away gently, “I’m not as ditzy as her!”

Lisa was one of the side characters in “The Love Boat”, Monica’s best friend. She was portrayed as a bit of a stereotypical idiot at first, but had since gotten an insanely brilliant amount of development. The part Squidward had been referencing, however, was when she’d tried to ask out a boy and incidentally spilt hot chocolate all down her dress.

“Okay, okay!” he held his tentacles up in self-defense, “You’re not. Careful, though, actually. It’s hot.”

Pearl smiled lightly, bringing the cup to her lips. “Mkay.”

It was nice.

Being… cared about.

Feeling comfortable, and not cramped up in a cheap chair your dad found at the tip.

And having a drink that didn’t taste like sewage water. Literally (well not literally, but literally in the sense she always used it). Her father made hot chocolate by mixing hot water and chocolate powder, and not warming it up to a proper extent to conserve electricity. Which, if you wanted it that way, sure, go nuts. But she didn’t, and wasn’t allowed to have it any other way. Except for when she was at Squidward’s.

“Adverts,” Squidward’s voice snapped Pearl out of her thoughts.

He was pointing at the television, pointing out that advertisem*nts were playing before they could watch the programme, and complaining about how this shouldn’t be so if they’re already paying for the package that the show was included on. Pearl listened in silence, smirking to herself. She loved his little rants. It was admittedly rather funny when he got wound up about things.

Eventually he drifted off of this, and took to tapping at his knees as some kind of stimulation while his brain worked to remember what he was going to say next. “Oh! Of course,” he leaned to one side and hooked his tentacle underneath a stack of magazines that were supported on a shelf inside a bamboo side cabinet, pulling them out.

Pearl watched with interest, absent-mindedly picking up the remote in case the show started before they were done looking at whatever it was Squidward was about to present to her, and they needed to pause it.

He produced a television guide, and opened it up to the middle, looked slightly embarrassed that he’d picked the wrong page, and sheepishly flicked through as discreetly as he could until he found the correct one. With a slight smile, the cephalopod handed the item over, giving one article, circled in red, a little tap to direct his niece’s attention there first.

It didn’t even take a second for Pearl to register what she was looking at and get very, very excited. “OHMYGOD, NO WAY!”

Aiming to pull the magazine closer, a bit of a scrabble ensued, in which she almost did actually spill the hot chocolate all over herself. Squidward was luckily quick to react, and shot out an arm to stop the mug from being tilted too far, thankfully preventing the horrible scold that could’ve come unto Pearl had he not been there.

Stabilising the cup, Pearl quickly placed it down on the coffee table, shooting Squidward a remorseful look, who stared back at her with one that wordlessly said “I told you to be careful”.

“S-sorry,” Pearl stammered, tripping over her words as she struggled to manage the adrenaline that was bubbling up faster than Squidward’s temper whenever SpongeBob broke in, “I got excited.”

“I can see,” Squidward replied, correcting her placement of the mug by transferring it to sit on top of a shell coaster, “Just be more careful, like I said. We don’t want to have to go out in that storm to get you care… And we also don’t want you, uh, getting hurt. I did that backwards. Switch those priorities.”

She laughed lightly, “Okay. Sorry, again, I just-!”

In the moment it was far too difficult to locate the right words that could accurately express the absolute exhilaration she was currently experiencing, so flapped her flipper about as a substitute.

“Hey, I’m just as excited as you are!” Squidward pointed out, “A new season of ‘The Love Boat’ would have anyone buzzing, but I don’t see them going around like Lisa.”

“I deserve that one,” Pearl agreed, beaming. She’d rather have quipped back, but as it stood, she was far too elated to act otherwise. Regardless of her new excitement, something still weighed on her mind, and she expressed it before her brain could catch up, “I hope I’m not keeping you up, by the way.”

“Eh, SpongeBob and Patrick wake me up every other night, what’s one more? You’re fine; you didn’t bother me. You, uh… never could,” Squidward assured her, watching her expression soften and relax, that guilt now cleared. Gesturing loosely to the magazine that the other had in a death-grip, he built on, “You can read the rest now, if you like, I think I might get a quick bite to eat before we watch. You want anything?”

“Do you have k-”

“Kelp bites? Always.” They were Pearl’s favourite from when she was just a little calf. The wrappers came in different colours depending on which flavour you got: blue for marshmallow, orange for the tangy crunch interior, green for plain old chocolate, and red for jam-filled, which was Pearl’s favourite. Every time he’d come over to babysit her, he always brought one with him, a surefire way to placate her had there been any childish trouble. Since Pearl still had such fond memories of this, he’d taken the liberty to get them in nowadays, too, should she visit. And as it was, she had.

This level of consideration wasn’t something Pearl was used to, not with how her dad often was with money. Smiling to herself, she turned back to the magazine and began to read through the paragraph. “Uncle Squiddy?” she added, while it was fresh in her mind, “Thank you for letting me stay.”

Squidward hummed. “It’s alright.”