A/N: This story is NSFW and contains past Lapidot.
Peridot uses they/them pronouns
*This fic is also posted on A03 if it's hard to read on .
X
There was a perfectly logical explanation for this: it had started out as a joke.
Peridot had known for months that their roommate, Lapis was a camgirl, and finally figured out the moniker she used, as well as the site. Peridot's first clue was finding a check stub poking out of an indiscriminate pile of papers on the kitchen table. The paper had stuck to the bottom of their coffee mug, a stain spreading through the paper.
"How archaic," Peridot had commented, finding irony that an online site physically mailed check stubs. The company's name was discreet. It was a good guess on Peridot's part, and also the fact that Lapis had no other source of income after getting fired at the ice cream shop next door.
With a quick Google search of the company name on the check stub, Peridot found the camming site within minutes. That was the easy part, the hard part was finding Lapis's handle. They had tried all the ocean or water themed names but found every camgirl but their roommate. Of course, that would be too obvious wouldn't it? So Peridot backtracked and considered that maybe Lapis used a name that they both knew embarrassed her to throw Peridot off the trail.
"Oh, Lazuli," Peridot chuckled, searching the name: 'Raven Darkcloth.' "Never left your goth phase, did you?"
Peridot recognized the first person in the search results as their friend, and after a bout of snickering, joined her chat room. It wasn't as interesting as Peridot had expected, or maybe whatever it was Lapis and her fans were into wasn't to their taste. It only got interesting when Peridot derailed the chat and got a rise out of Lapis, snippily cursing at Peridot before shortly kicking them out of the room.
Peridot considered hacking into the chat site to remove the ban on their IP address, then considered looking through the rest of the cam site and made an executive decision, typing "BBW" into the search bar.
The resulting women were beautiful, some curves, many plentiful and plump, unabashed of their rolls. However, the profile pictures were nearly all the same: close up shots of asses or breasts, not unappealing, but impersonal.
One profile picture stood out from the rest, a shot of a short and stout woman with a shock of platinum blonde hair hanging over half of her face. Peridot found themself hovering the mouse over the profile picture and a gif of the current cam show played. The same woman was lounging in a messy pile of covers, languidly eating pizza, the cheese runny and dripping down her breasts.
"Some people are into some weird stuff," Peridot said as they clicked on the gif, entering the camgirl's room.
The instant Peridot entered the room, they realized how different this was compared to Lapis's room. They could feel the other woman's eyes on them– or rather– her eyes following her computer screen, reading the messages in the chat.
"Heeeeey, new guy," she said, and waved, her mouth full, chunks of pizza falling into her lap.
[Hello] Peridot typed.
[Show us your puss!] One message interrupted theirs, followed by a whole string of similar demands.
"She's already naked," Peridot mumbled under their breath, rolling their eyes. Really, what else were they expecting to see? I should just leave, Peridot thought, yet they were still here, taking in the haphazard stockpiles that were in the camgirl's room: the box of tampons, the luchador bobblehead collection, scattered DVDs, and dirty clothes made sense, but the broken tennis racket and cat carrier with a rusted door were questionable.
Two new users joined the room.
The woman on screen finished her pizza, wiping the grease on her bare thigh, leaving a snail trail streak. "So, for any of you freaks that are new: I'm Amethyst."
Peridot wondered if that was really her name. A part of them really believed it. Amethyst seemed down to Earth, like the kind of girl next door who got you into fun trouble that you only half regretted. She seemed like the type of person who you wanted to buy a beer for. She seemed nice. Genuine. And she burped on camera and laughed it off, asking her viewers to rate it.
[10/10]
[9/10]
[Adequate.] Peridot supplied.
[Show us your puss!]
"She's already naked, you clod," Peridot muttered. How did Amethyst and Lapis deal with these people?
Peridot quickly learned it was better to close out the chat window, knowing they were well past curiosity when they simply didn't choose to exit the site. Disgust at the commenters aside, they really liked Amethyst. While Amethyst talked about a movie she watched recently and complained about her roommate (who had sneaked into her room when she was out and managed to clean a corner of her room before she was caught) , Peridot leaned back in their chair and relaxed. There was something soothing about Amethyst's voice and the way she was just casually sprawled naked on the bed…
Peridot could easily picture the other woman as their girlfriend, sharing the finer details of her life and venting, curled up against her body. Of course, coming back to reality, that wouldn't ever happen. Whatever relationship Amethyst had with her viewers was strictly business, a fantasy. But it was still a fantasy Peridot found they liked to entertain.
And that's when they realized that they had been single for too long, resorting to a pseudo relationship with a cam girl whose show they'd only been watching for the past three hours.
"When's the last time I dated?" Peridot asked during breakfast the next day, which was technically lunch but the first meal of the day for them and Lapis.
"Since me," Lapis replied flatly, placing an uneaten pizza crust back into the box.
"Yes. I was afraid of that." Peridot frowned and took the abandoned pizza crust, picking up where Lapis left off.
"Dating is dumb," Lapis said.
"I don't know. It seems nice… to have someone to talk to, to share everything with. I miss that."
"I guess," said Lapis, shrugging, picking up a new slice of pizza.
It was conversations like this that made Peridot uneasy. Although the breakup had been hard on Peridot's part and initially awkward because they still lived together, it could have been messier. Peridot was grateful they were still friends but often wondered if it was their fault that the relationship had fallen apart. And Lapis hadn't dated since then either, but unlike for Peridot, it had been by choice.
The rest of the pizza and the awkward bits of crust were stowed back in the fridge and Lapis went out, leaving Peridot to their coding program and thoughts. The apartment was quiet, amplifying the conversation they had over sorta-breakfast, and within the hour Peridot had opened a tab to the dating site Stupid Cupid and was agonizing over making the perfect profile. Rather than working, they sorted through their small assortment of pictures for the perfect profile picture and then struggled to message the prospective love interests that the site suggested.
No one replied back to their messages over the next week, and although they had several "likes," no one had bothered to approach them.
"Dating is dumb," they agreed. They deleted their Stupid Cupid profile and went straight to the Flirty Girls Cam site.
