Crush
(Prompt for Lapidot Tuesday (1st March))
by
Silver-Eyed Rukia
Rated: T
Pairing: Lapidot
Note: Please ignore any mistakes. Or point them out and correct me, whatever you prefer.
Dedicated to punproductive on tumblr
"Catch!"
The kernel beneath his sandals crunched as Steven hurried over their makeshift volleyball field, heel digging into the warmed up sand in an almost heroic looking attempt to pass the ball to his partner, only for him to miss the sphere by only a few inches. The ball bounced off the beach once before firmly getting planted into a now volleyball shaped indentation before a pair of dark hands picked it off the ground. Connie smiled and tucked the ball under one of her arms before extending the other to her friend, picking him off the ground before falling into a fit of giggles along with him.
"Nice try Steven, but maybe next time don't try to get stuck inside the sand."
The boy in question gave a toothy grin before dusting some of the grains out of his black locks, attention moving to the other duo standing on the opposite field. Or well, the one person and her entirely made out of water partner.
"You're getting real good at this Lapis! Even your clone is giving me a run for my money."
The ocean gem gave him a small but utterly sincere smile as the two kids played a short game of limbo to get past the net before they positioned themselves in front of her, Steven still smiling brightly while his slightly shorter friend was staring at the water clone in what Lapis assumed to be sheer amazement. Maybe a bit of healthy caution, too.
"So this clone is made entirely out of water? And you can control it?" The rims of her glasses reflected the light of the sun like a kaleidoscope for a split second as her attention wandered from the water-Lapis to the actual one, rays of rainbow-colored light breaking through the clone's watery surface. She received an affirmative nod that only further widened her already in wonder enlarged eyes, voice barely above a whisper as she touched the seemingly solidified liquid. "That's so cool."
"Yeah, she can make clones of other people, too! But you've already seen that before...", he trailed off as he remembered the last incident where Connie had seen a display of Lapis' true power, images of them both nearly drowning leaving a bad taste in his mouth and effectively killing the easy-going atmosphere that had been dominating the conversation so far. The clone dissipated wordlessly, leaving only an almost completely spherical wet patch in the sand.
"I'm...sorry."
Connie was about to console the suddenly very sullen looking gem when a bright flash and a noise she remembered to be that of a warp pad activating successfully distracted both the gem and Steven and she let out a relieved breath she didn't know she had been holding. 'Crisis averted.'
"The gems are back", Steven almost screamed in his excitement and he grabbed Connie's hand, pulling the girl along with him up the stairs and into the house. Lapis looked at the slowly vaporizing stain on the beach before she followed the two, face unreadable. She realized that she had some atoning to do but being so harshly reminded of her wrong-doings still hurt.
The screen-door fell shut behind her with a small click but no one seemed to notice as all the Crystal Gems were busy filling the two kids in on what had happened on their mission, the two humans hanging onto every word that left Amethyst's full lips like a bee to a honeycomb. Lapis vaguely recalled the purpose of the mission, something about broken warp pads, but she hadn't been interested enough to give Pearl's lengthy explanation too much attention. Her eyes travelled over Garnet's square shock of hair and Pearl's already annoyed expression in search for her favourite shade of green. And the moment she connected her ocean-colored orbs with the visor-covered ones of the technician she felt that familiar throbbing in her chest, as if something was trying to leap out of it with a detour through her now clogged up throat. She felt her hands grow warm and clamy with what she had learned to be sweat and only started getting more confused about the entire palette of weird feelings she had started experiencing ever since the Homeworlder had started interacting with her.
Peridot broke the stare that felt like it lasted for all eternity but had in truth just taken a few seconds before excusing herself and brushing past Lapis without sparing her another glance, almost unnoticeable blush coloring her cheeks a fading shade of blue. The slamming of the door was now, unlike earlier, almost deafeningly loud in the sudden silence that loomed like a blanket over the room and the ocean gem felt all 11 eyes remaining in the room aside from her own staring at her like she was suddenly the most interesting thing they had ever seen. It took a few seconds and an awkward cough from Pearl before everyone seemed to snap out of whatever daze they had been in.
"Well, how about we get started on your training Connie? It's certainly been a while."
The dark-skinned girl gave Lapis a sympathetic glance before she nodded vigorously. "Yes ma'am!"
"Steven, how about you and Lapis prepare her something for when she's done? I'm sure you two have something to talk about to kill the time."
Amethyst openly cringed at the not even remotely hidden message the tall gem was leaking through and when said gem and Connie disappeared in a bright flash emitting from the pad she just face-palmed.
"Way to make things awkward, P", she mumbled before she caught Garnet staring at her, shade-covered eyes almost digging into her own. "Uh...I'll be in my room eating garbage."
The magically sealed door opened and closed in quick succession as both Garnet and Amethyst left the now remaining gems alone inside the house, atmosphere still thick and heavy with something Steven couldn't quite put his finger on. So instead of brooding he only grabbed Lapis by the hand and started explaining to her how to make healthy smoothies. He noticed how her somewhat shaky fingers nearly slipped off the cutting board and when she wordlessly handed him the now cut up strawberries the boy finally decided to address the elephant in the room.
"Are you and Peridot...doing okay? Things feel really tense around you two lately."
He watched as Lapis put the knife down before she turned to him, a gesture of safety he appreciated, hands now balled into tight fists without anything to hold between them.
"I don't understand what I did wrong, Steven." Her voice was thick and coated with an emotion she couldn't name, throat still feeling as if someone was squeezing it shut with all their might. "Ever since Pearl walked in on us a few days ago Peridot has been all but avoiding me. All my attempts to confront her about it have been denied and now she won't even look at me for more than a moment before running off." Hot tears were leaving a prickling sensation at the back of her eyes but she blinked them away, refusing to display such an utter lack of emotional control in front of her only friend. "What is this sensation…it hurts."
Steven watched as Lapis put one of her clenched fists up to her chest, the sheer frustration about the situation clearly visible on her face. He recalled what Pearl had told him, how she had caught them doing...something in the living room at night. But he wasn't as naive as to think that they had just been practicing a fusion dance like they had told everyone. No, the way the two looked at each other, even if it was for just the briefest of moments, told him that they had been doing something similarly intimate but yet entirely different that night.
"Maybe you have a crush on Peridot", he said quietly as he took Lapis free hand into his own, gingerly spreading her fingers out of their balled position and looking up at his beach summer fun body to see if she was alright with him touching her like that. She didn't flinch back and Steven took that as his cue to continue.
"You see, when two people really like each other, sometimes they do really stupid things because they care so much. Ruby and Sapphire sometimes fight and they've loved each other for thousands of years. Pearl and Amethyst are so different but deep down they care so much about each other that they make the perfect team. Even me and Connie." He interrupted himself shortly before placing Lapis' now open hand, palm facing his front, unto his chest, just above his heart.
"We can be rash and thoughtless sometimes because we worry and care so much about our loved ones that our heart outweighs our head. Can you feel it?"
Lapis' blue eyes stared intently at the hand firmly pressed against the human's chest and surely, not a moment later she felt the soft, repetitive beating of the heart he had just talked about. It reminded her of that throbbing sensation she had felt when she had first seen Peridot that day and her mouth opened slightly in silent amazement. Steven, happy with her reaction, removed her hand before letting go of it.
"I am sure that whatever Peridot's reasons are, she does it because she cares about you and she just doesn't really know how to tell you." He gave Lapis his usual toothy grin before ushering the taller gem out the door, giving her an encouraging shove out onto the porch before waving enthusiastically. "Now go talk to her! She may be terrible with her feelings but she's great at understanding stuff."
If Lapis had known what irony was she probably would have thought that the weather was being pretty ironic.
Thick, heavy clouds had accumulated while she and Steven had been talking inside the house and thick drops were already starting to rain down from the sky, dripping off her skin and clinging to her hair like they felt drawn to her. Funny considering she was indeed a water-based gem with the power of hydrokinesis but as of now she only felt like the weather was reflecting her mood. Her hand moved through the air to form a makeshift water roof to shield her from the rain but after stopping dead in her tracks she just let the arm fall back to her side, now pouring rain drenching her from head to toe. She could just remove it at will anyways; why not enjoy the feeling of millions of little droplets caressing her body. Her mind immediately jumped to Peridot and how her kisses had felt upon her lips and her mouth pressed into a thin line. She would find out what the green gem was so upset about, even if it meant losing whatever they had built up until now.
The path up to the old wooden barn was already turning into a mudslide that Steven would have loved to play in. Memories of his encouraging grin and his thumping chest filled her with even more determination as she slowly pulled the heavy doors of the barn open, hinges creaking unhappily from the moisture and lack of proper attention given to them. If Peridot was inside the sound would have most likely alerted her to Lapis' presence but as of now everything was quiet. Nearly.
The ocean gem heard faint voices muttering something so faintly that she couldn't make it out, eyes wandering from one end to the other to locate the source of the echoing chatter. An easy to miss glow reflected off of one of the metallic parts used for fixing the wooden frame and she recalled the upper section to be the place where Peridot had a couch and a TV just to herself. She closed the door to block out the thundering rain outside and the squeaking hinges nearly hurt her teeth with their high-pitched volume. Shaking her head to rid herself of that awful sensation and the growing nervousness in the pit of her stomach Lapis made her way over to the ladder, ascending it almost without any sounds made. The closer she came to reaching the last rung the more the incoherent chatter turned into phrases she had actually memorized before.
"It's the color war Paulette, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
The voice suddenly sounded like garbled nonsense as it was being rewound and Lapis frowned as she finally reached the upper level, TV now barely a stone's throw away from her. She saw Peridot sitting in front of the device with one of her arms wrapped around her legs that were securely planted in front of her while the other held something that somewhat resembled her tape recorder, it's tip pointing at the TV as the sentence repeated again.
"It's the color war Paulette, doesn't that mean anything to you?"
This time Peridot had spoken along with the line in the show before she stopped the recording, image of Percy and Paulette about to kiss frozen on the screen. She had noticed the ocean gem the moment she had entered but she couldn't will her body to move away to avoid her and truthfully she didn't want to. But what she wanted to do and what she needed to do usually were two different things, things that would eventually end up hurting her. Or those close to her.
Her visor-covered eyes drifted from the screen over to the gem as she took a step forward, glow of the TV reflecting off the many drops of water still clinging onto her skin like a protective coating. Peridot frowned at the thought.
"Why are you completely drenched? You have the ability to command liquids; it should be easy to avoid getting rain stuck to you like that."
Lapis made a quick gesture and the drops immediately started floating off of her and into a small ball of water that she quickly disposed of into a cleaning bucket somewhere around the lower level. How she knew where it was remained a mystery to Peridot.
"I am not here to talk about rain, Peridot."
Another step forward and the ocean gem was now standing right next to the other Homeworlder, the lack of her running off giving Lapis the necessary encouragement to continue. She knelt down to be on eye level with the her and noticed Peridot's fingers gripping her arm so tightly that the skin over her knuckles was stretched thin, turning a lighter shade of green. Lapis frowned.
"Why are you avoiding me?"
Peridot looked the ocean gem in the eye but quickly broke the contact out of fear of getting lost in her seemingly bottomless blue orbs. She didn't want to see the hurt flashing through them, couldn't stand to bear the thought.
"I am not avoiding you. I am just not actively seeking out your company."
She flinched briefly as she felt Lapis' fingers brushing her own, successfully separating them from the spot on her arm where she had nearly broken the skin with her death-grip. Her fingers felt cold and smooth on the bruised limb and the already huge stone on Peridot's chest grew only larger at the sensitive contact.
"That's basically the same thing." Her brows furrowed as she swallowed the already growing lump in her throat, voice bordering on turning raspy as she continued, "I just…don't understand. Is it me? Did I do something wrong?"
It was then, as visor-covered eyes returned to those pleading navy blue ones, that Peridot felt her resolve crack, shattering completely when she saw tears forming in Lapis' eyes.
"It is everything you do! Your presence is so pleasantly distracting that I cannot focus on anything but you. You are the first person on this sodding planet that makes me want to stay on my own accord and not because I am helplessly stranded here."
Her voice had been rising until it had nearly cracked from sheer emotion put into it as she finished. She took a shuddering breath that did nothing to calm her down and cursed quietly as she felt tears sliding down her cheeks that were caught by blue thumbs brushing them off her face, a gesture that made her feel both happy and remorseful, a conflict she had been dealing with for days now without ever finding a solution.
"I am a traitor to our Homeworld, Lazuli. They will be coming for me. And when they do I do not want them to hurt you, too." Her blurry vision focused on Lapis' face who's expression was mirroring hers in every detail before it dropped down to their by now entwined fingers, giving them a squeeze meant to reassure them both.
"I have thought about every possible outcome, both logical and hopeful. And every conclusion I came to only made it more blatantly obvious: when Homeworld comes for me they will annihilate everyone. And we can't fight them."
"But that's why we have to fight them!"
It was utterly ironic and she knew that, using the same sentence Steven had used against her back on the Homeworld ship, but she felt like it was all she could do to convince Peridot that she was wrong.
"You can't honestly expect to fight off invading Homeworld ships and come out victorious", Peridot replied, voice void of her earlier hysteria and now sounding utterly incredulous. "Are you insane?"
If it hadn't been for the serious atmosphere Lapis would have had the decency to blush at the dumbstruck look on Peridot's face combined with the insult but as things were right now she just opted on grinding her teeth together to keep her temper in check. She needed to calm Peridot down to her rational self, ridding her of the fear and terror clouding her judgment. She took a deep breath before she placed the green gem's hand on her chest, eliciting a half-gasp and a faint blush out of her.
"I don't know if you can feel it but I'll try my best to explain what it feels like." The lack of a complaint edge her on to continue.
"When I see you my face feels like it's been splashed with freezing water, refreshing my mind and leaving a hot burn on my cheeks. The moment your permanently annoyed expression becomes less hostile whenever it's me distracting you from work makes the back of my neck prickle like it has been stabbed with the tiniest of needles." She interrupted herself to pull Peridot a bit closer to herself, replacing the hand with the gems chest as their bodies now fully connected, barely an inch now seperating their lips.
"The feeling of your skin against mine, lips connecting in a ritual that is so foreign but feels so right. Earth is not the place you came from and for millennia it was nothing but a prison for me, but together we could make it home and for that I am willing to fight anyone, even if it's the very same people I used to call my kin."
"You did not have to explain yourself, Lazuli", Peridot finally replied as she brought a little bit of distance between them to look the ocean gem in the eyes, finding nothing but honesty and true intentions in them. The tears, now dried, had smudged her visor and usually she would have found the time to be annoyed at that but right now she didn't mind; Lapis was all that mattered. "Because I feel the same way."
"You do?"
Lapis had hoped to make it sound less shocked and hopefully enthusiastic but utterly failed. She clamped a hand over her mouth in embarrassment as she caught Peridot's confused gaze as if she had just shouted the most gruesome obscenities anyone could possibly think of.
"Naturally. What did you think was the reason I avoided you?"
Her mouth, now uncovered as her hand dropped to unconsciously reach for Peridot's, opened before closing again without ever releasing a sound. Her mind blanked. She hadn't ever thought of a specific reason why, too busy worrying about how to fix everything. The smaller gem must have sensed the rather obvious lack of explanation from her opposite so instead of prying further she took every little ounce of bravery she had left and pushed the blue alien onto her back gently before climbing on top of her, an arm's distance seperating them. The still frozen frame from the Camp Pining Hearts episode illuminated one side of Lapis face while the other one remained shrouded in darkness like a physical manifestation of her character: both good and evil.
"Your failure to reply to my inquiry tells me that you have not bothered to think that far ahead, how very fitting. Always relying on your emotions, Lazuli." Peridot's voice had returned to it's snarky, almost nasally self before she paused, looking down into the stunned face of the gem beneath her. She was breathtakingly beautiful and that simple acknowledgement was proof enough that Peridot had hopelessly fallen for the fellow Homeworlder.
"I would hate to leave you in the dark so let me fill in the blanks", she started before clearing her throat, suddenly painfully obvious to the rather...suggestive position they were both in. She opted on resting her head on the blue gem's chest, eyes staring at Percy's and Paulette's motionless faces that were about to connect before she continued, glad that Lapis couldn't see her now burning cheeks.
"I concluded that since being close to you made me feel all these feelings, seperation would quell them. Make you lose interest, creating the image that you and I can not be connected in any way when the Homeworld troops arrive." Now that she said those things out loud they seemed highly illogical and really silly. Of course Yellow Diamond would track Lazuli back to her, she was her informant after all.
"In retrospect that idea might not have been one of my best."
Faint chuckles reached her ears, sound rumbling through Lapis' torso like the melodic rhymth of strings being plucked, an analogy that made her think of Steven's ukulele. She raised her head only to flinch back out of surprise more than pain when Lapis softly flicked her nose.
"Hey!"
More giggling.
"You know, I think you might have a crush on me."
If Peridot had had bangs her eyebrows would have easily disappeared beneath them at the statement.
"I am not crushing you, that's impossible."
"No not- oh my stars Peridot, you need to talk to Steven more."
Peridot grumbled something about "clods" beneath her breath before her attention returned to Lapis as said gem started running a hand through her triangular-shaped hair, earlier emotional outbreaks and worries replaced by feelings of contentment and mutual understanding.
"It means to do stupid things for the right reasons."
The idle device finally turned off after having been neglected for a certain amount of time, cloaking the pair in shadows that combined with the still pouring rain outside created a rather calming atmosphere. Neither spoke, for how long they wouldn't have been able to tell and they simply enjoyed the conclusion that they had come to and the presence of each other. It was Peridot who first broke the comfortable silence, voice vibrating against Lapis' chest that soon after shook with tremors caused by her bubbling laughter.
"You are most likely correct, I do have a crush on you."
It took me two days to finish this and I went back and edited it so many times and it's much darker than I wanted it to be and URGH I have so many complaints right now but I am just glad I finally finished it So here you have it, 4th chapter up with more angst and fluff cause you appreciate the latter after experiencing the first.
You can also follow me on tumblr to stay updated, same username as here! (silvereyedrukia. tumblr. com)
Phrase of the Day
If two people are meant for one another, that doesn't mean that they have to rush and be together right away. Real love takes time to grow, just like how it takes time to grow from children to adults
~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers: The Unthinkable
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