Chapter 1
The sun woke Peridot up before her alarm did. Peridot hated waking up. She hated it even more knowing that she could have slept for another (Peridot squinted at her alarm clock, her eyes adjusting to the light shining through the window) fifteen minutes before she had to actually get up. Maybe if she could get up and close the blinds? No, by the time she got back into bed she would be properly awake, and then it would have been for nothing.
With a groan, Peridot reached over and grabbed her phone from the bedside table and opened her notifications. Two new Tumblr followers, and a text from Lapis. Peridot smiled slightly, and opened up the text from Lapis.
Hey babe, I went ahead and grabbed breakfast before I went over to the Temple, feel free to grab some cereal or whatever if you want. I also opened the blinds for you to make sure you woke up in time for the mission ;-P
Peridot turned around to look at Lapis' side of their bed, and sure enough, it was empty. Turning back to her phone, she replied.
First off, Fuck you. Secondly, I'll be there in about half an hour. 凸(｀△´＋）
Pushing herself out of bed, Peridot pulled on her robe (an anniversary/birthday gift from Steven), and dragged herself out of the bedroom.
The apartment Peridot and Lapis lived in wasn't big, just one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room with a kitchen separated only by a breakfast bar that was never used for breakfast. But it had a little balcony that looked over Rehoboth Bay, so it made it seem a bit larger, but none of this was going through Peridot's head while she shuffled into the bathroom. She was thinking about the magazine she had noticed when she had gone to the grocery store with Steven the other day.
The Food Mart on Main Street wasn't very large, and was designed appealed more to a tourist's needs than a local's, but it was the closer than the large grocery in the next town over, so they did most of their shopping there. Steven was sitting in the cart, flipping through a comic book he had brought with him for entertainment. Pearl, who was in charge of pushing the cart, was comparing the price of two different peanut butters to their nutrition facts. Peridot was standing next to the cart, wishing she was as smart as Steven to bring entertainment. Finally, Pearl made her decision, she placed the worthy peanut butter next to Steven, and they continued on.
They passed by the bakery, where Pearl picked up two loaves of bread, whole wheat for the Temple, white for Lapis and Peridot's apartment. It was around this time that Steven finished his comic book. They moved onto the produce section.
"Hey Peridot, do you want to come with me to see if they have the next issue of Cat Fighters?" Steven jumped out of the cart, Pearl had been comparing oranges for the last two minutes.
"I would love to," She replied, and followed Steven over to where they kept the magazines.
The magazine section was located next to the entrance, it was a modest size, and carried both magazines, paperback novellas, and comic books. Steven made a beeline for the comic section and began searching it for Cat Fighters. Peridot wasn't really interested in comics very much, so she wandered over to the magazine section. Most of the magazines were covered in half-dressed celebrities, with bold and overly colorful headlines screaming how to lose such and so amount of weight in such and so amount of days, and prompting readers to pick them up with tantalizing information on the latest celebrity relationships and other such gossip. Peridot couldn't care less.
She was about to wander over to the novella section when a magazine caught her eye. Unlike the other magazines, the cover of this magazine was mainly white. A young woman in a white ballgown looked up from the cover, a smile on her face, flowers in her hands, and a white veil obscuring her eyes. Golden Letters above the woman said "Wedding Now". Peridot picked up the magazine and flipped through it. All of the articles seemed to be about the same thing, something that intrigued Peridot.
"Hey Steven?" Steven looked up from his search, "What's a 'Wedding'?"
"Huh?" Steven looked over Peridot's shoulder at the magazine, "Oh. A wedding is when two people get married." Steven looked over at Peridot, who still had a look of confusion on her face, so he continued, "Marriage is when two people promise to spend the rest of their lives together. A wedding is the ceremony that makes it all official, it's really fancy and everyone dresses up. There's music and cake and stuff. And then afterwards the people that got married wear rings on their left ring finger to show that they're married to each other."
"But why would you want to have a party for your relationship? It just seems a bit conceited if you ask me," Peridot replied, flipping to another page in the magazine, it was an article about affording marriage and setting a budget, "And expensive."
"I guess some people don't think that way," Steven turned to the next page, there was a picture of a man and woman kissing in front of a large crowd of people, everyone seemed to be really happy.
"Oh there you two are," Pearl pushed the cart over to them, "I'm all ready to check out now, do you guys have everything you need?"
"All set!" Steven said, holding up a copy of the comic he had been looking for, "You coming Peridot?"
Peridot was about to set the magazine back down where they had grabbed it from, but she hesitated. "Yes, I'm coming," she replied, putting the magazine under her arm.
Peridot stepped out of the shower, making sure to dry herself off completely before phasing into her clothes. Her outfit wasn't dissimilar to how it was before she had joined the Crystal Gems. The only differences being that instead of a diamond on her chest and knees, she had stars, her leotard was now more of a skirt, with her leggings still acting as leggings, also her hair was messier.
Now clean, Peridot grabbed her star-shaped backpack that she kept her keys, phone, wallet, and other essentials in during missions and put on her platform boots (the best limb enhancers she could get on this planet). Taking one quick look around the apartment, Peridot locked the door on her way out.