a/n: I'd like to apologise to you guys. While I knew this fic was going to be slow to update, I really didn't mean to leave you two months without an update. But I'm now in year 11, which means lots of exam prep, careers meetings, and mocks. And a fuckton of homework. So yeah, my life has been hectic. But I managed to make time for Jaspidot now! Hopefully now that I've settled into my routine a bit I'll be able to make more time to write, but, yeah, as always this isn't going to be a weekly thing. However I don't plan on ever having such a long break like the one between the lats chapter and this one.
However, to make up for it, this chapter is super long and super gay.
Anyway, now that the boring part's out the way, enjoy the chapter!
Peridot awoke to the delicious smell of bacon frying slowly wafting up to her room from the kitchen. While normally she wouldn't be opposed to this, it took her a few minutes to gather her thoughts from a sleep-filled daze to remember that they didn't have any bacon in the house.
And that she could also smell, faintly, something burning.
She shot up, immediately wide awake and alert. She groped around the clutter of her bedside table for her glasses before struggling out of bed and putting them on her face. Somehow during the night her covers had managed to wrap themselves around her legs of their own accord, and she had to take a minute to untangle herself from them, before realises that Jasper was no longer asleep on the floor.
"Oh God," she muttered to herself, her voice scratchy from lack of use. She hurriedly rushed out of her room and down the stairs to the kitchen, only to be stopped in her tracks.
Jasper was standing by the oven, casually frying bacon while keeping one eye on the toaster, and also drinking from a carton of orange juice. Thankfully, she had put her jeans back on. Peridot didn't think she'd be able to handle seeing Jasper's lithe body so early on in the morning.
On cue, as if she could sense Peridot thinking about her, Jasper turned around. She set the carton down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Sup, Peri Peri Chicken?" she greeted with a smirk.
Peridot tried to gather her thoughts into actual sentences. "What is going on? Where did you get bacon from?" she exclaimed, not bothering to comment on the nicknames. She reckoned it was about time to admit defeat anyway. Jasper wasn't going to stop with them no matter what. Maybe she could train herself to blank them out?
"Yeah, I got a craving for it, so I went to the store. Hope you're hungry," Jasper said casually.
Peridot's mouth opened and closed as she tried to think of something to say. Well, at least her explanation made sense, she thought to herself.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. I can deal with that. But why is there a burning smell?"
Jasper's smile turned sort of sheepish. "I maybe burnt a piece of bread. Your toaster's more complicated than it looks!"
Peridot sighs, finally resigning herself to Jasper's strange antics.
"Okay," she repeats, and figures she's mostly done wrapping her head around all this madness.
She slumps at the kitchen table, checking the time on the clock hanging on the wall. It's around half nine.
Less than two hours until you meet with Lapis, her brain reminded her.
She groaned internally. Though she felt like last night she resolved some of her issues by talking to Jasper, she still wasn't looking forward to talking with her best friend about her ex-girlfriend. For some reason, whenever she pictured Lapis with Pearl, she got a funny feeling in her heart, kind of like something was clawing at it.
Whatever it was, she didn't like it at all.
She snapped back into reality, pushing her thoughts of Lapis to the back of her head and saving them for later, when Jasper offered her the carton of juice. Her raised eyebrow asked the question for her: want some?
She scrunched up her nose when she remembered Jasper drank straight out of it. "I think I'll pass."
Jasper shrugged, and they then sat in comfortable silence while Jasper plated up the food. She had somehow managed to turn on the radio (how she had managed to do that when she couldn't figure out how to use a simple toaster Peridot had no clue) and smooth swing music filtered through the speakers at a soft, low volume. The moment felt so right for Peridot, and again she had to be taken away from her thoughts abruptly when Jasper placed a plate down in front of her.
"Wow, you're practically a gourmet chef," she commented as she observed the food in front of her: a toasted sandwich, heaped with bacon in the middle.
"Shut up and eat your sandwich, Peridot," Jasper mocked, taking a massive bite out of her own.
"No, I'm serious," Peridot said, a giggle escaping and breaking her serious act," you're practically Gordon Ramsey … if he went to the gym like 24/7." She continued to chuckle.
Jasper sighed. "You gonna eat that or not, cause, y'know, I'm an athlete. I'm a big eater, and another sandwich is sounding pretty tempting right now."
"Alright, okay, I'm eating it," Peridot said defensively, finally taking a bite out of it. It was surprisingly good, the bacon fried to the perfect texture and taste. She closed her eyes momentarily in bliss, and when she opened them again Jasper was staring at her with a somewhat expectant look on her face, mixed with something else Peridot just couldn't decipher.
"Is it good?" she asked.
Peridot nodded. "You take food very seriously."
Jasper smiled slightly, but said nothing, and they finished their food, once again, in silence.
While normally Peridot did enjoy silences, as she wasn't really good with conversation, something with Jasper felt different. This quiet … it wasn't because of Peridot's lack of ability with small talk, but because they felt relaxed around one another. Somehow, overnight, something in their dynamic had shifted. Although they still exchanged insults and teased each other, there was no hostility like before. It just felt weird to Peridot – like the natural order of everything had shifted. She wasn't talking to Lapis, and Jasper was sitting in her kitchen and trying to steal bacon off her plate.
Her eyes widened in realisation and she slapped Jasper's hand away gently.
"Greedy," she mutters, before standing up to take the plates and put them in the dishwasher.
Jasper even helps her, and Peridot can only narrow her eyes in suspicion. Jasper was being too nice.
Jasper wipes her hands on her jeans once, and then turns to face Peridot, sighing. "So, what now?" she asks, and she gets the feeling she wasn't just talking about the present.
Peridot checks the time. "I'm meeting Lapis in an hour. You should probably go. After last night, I doubt she wants to see you."
Jasper raises an eyebrow; an invitation for Peridot to elaborate.
"Well, I mean, I did ditch her for you," she said awkwardly as she walked into the hallway, Jasper following her, and doing her best not to offend Jasper. Mentally she had to check herself; since when had she ever cared about insulting Jasper before? It seemed that as soon as she had woken up her entire world had now shifted to accommodate Jasper. The strangest thing was that she wasn't sure if that was a bad thing.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude on your date night," Jasper replies, and the genuine bitterness hidden in her tone makes Peridot question whether or not she's being sarcastic.
She wanted to respond, wanted to argue and have a go at Jasper and all her little idiosyncrasies that annoyed Peridot greatly, but somehow the fight had gone out of her. It wasn't even because of their agreement. Now a part of her genuinely wanted to be nice to Jasper, who only two days ago was probably one of Peridot's most hated people. Thinking about it only made her head hurt.
She said dejectedly, after a pause, "You should leave now. I'm going to take a shower."
Quickly Jasper retorted, "Is that an invitation, Dottie?"
Peridot tried to fix the other girl with her most withering gaze, hoping it would compensate for the way her heart went into overdrive and all the blood rushed to her face.
They stared at each other for a few, tense seconds.
"I'm going to go," Jasper said, turning around and awkwardly struggling for a few seconds to put on her shoes. "By the way, we're working on the project on Tuesday. Come over to mine," she continued speaking.
"Oh really?" Peridot questioned with a smirk, trying to diffuse the tension. "That's news to me."
Jasper opened the door and walked out backwards, shooting a cocky grin at Peridot. "Don't worry about it. Leave it to Jasper to come up with another awesome idea!" she yelled.
Peridot winced slightly, hoping to God the neighbours were already awake by now. She knows that Jasper's voice definitely isn't the sound she'd want to wake up to.
"Tch, yeah, whatever. Try not to cause too much trouble!" she called out after her.
Jasper turned around, waving a hand in the air as if to brush Peridot off, like she was a fly that needed to be swatted out the air.
"Oh, and don't get too gay with Lapis! That beach is public, you know!" Jasper's final yell seemed to echo in the air for minutes, until long after she was gone. Peridot then realised she'd been standing in the open doorway in her pyjamas for anyone to see, and quickly shut the door.
She shook her head at Jasper's antics. Now was not the time to think about their weird 'friendship' (if it could even be called that) that had been struck up. She had other things to focus on.
When Peridot saw Lapis sitting on the beach, her heart nearly beat straight out of her chest and onto the sand stretching out in front. She knew, somewhere in the rational part of her mind, that there was no reason to be this nervous. But the only thing going through her head right now were definitely not coherent thoughts; it was a constant stream of Lapis and Pearl hugging, Lapis and Pearl kissing, Lapis and Pearl together –
Lapis turned around then to face Peridot, and that's when her heart really did stop functioning.
Gone was Lapis' long brown French braid, a staple of Peridot's life for the majority of it. In its place was a choppy bob that somehow managed to make being uneven look like it was meant to be that way, with the ends coming down into points.
And it was shockingly, unnaturally, unmistakably blue.
"What the ever-loving fuck," Peridot said as she walked closer to Lapis, all instances of politeness thrown out the window. She was 100% sure Lapis had not looked like this last night.
Lapis gave a sheepish smile is response. She tugged at the end of one of the sapphire locks. "Amethyst did it last night. You like it?"
Peridot sat down beside Lapis on the towel, still awestruck.
"… Uh, yeah, it looks … nice," she replied, finally finding her voice but still a bit taken aback. "I know you're one for impulse decisions but isn't this taking it a bit too far?"
Lapis laughed, and Peridot was hit with how much she had missed that sound. The thought of how it had been less than twenty-four hours since they last saw each other passed through her mind, but was quickly brushed away. Her co-dependency issues could be touched upon later, after she had talked to Lapis.
"So did you have fun after I left?" Peridot hoped Lapis would ignore the way her voice got quieter as she said the last word.
Her eyes brightened, and Peridot couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, it was great! You should totally come down to the warehouse next time something's going on, everyone there is super nice, even the people who came from Charm City High. I heard they were supposed to be super tough, but they were actually so chill! And Sour Cream's music is amazing … " She trailed off as she noticed Peridot grinning at her, and a slight blush began to dust her face.
Peridot couldn't help but notice the way Lapis reached up to tug on the ends of her hair, just as she used to do with her braid. Now, though, she seemed to have forgotten about her haircut, as she kept reaching for strands that weren't there. It was just another thing that made about Lapis that made her smile.
"Oh, Peridot." Lapis sighed. "You'd have loved it."
Peridot shifted. "Yeah, sorry I had to make an emergency exit," she said, and tried to chuckle. It came out as more of an ailing croak, and she cringed.
"Oh no, it's okay," Lapis smiled, and though a part of Peridot did feel more at ease, there was something about her friend's angelic smile that made her think the worst was about to happen.
"I saw Jasper's Snapchat. Did you have a fun sleepover?" Lapis' voice was tinged with bitterness (reminding Peridot, strangely, of Jasper) and Peridot winced. Yep, the worst.
"You know it wasn't like that, Lapis," she said in a quiet voice.
Lapis shrugged. "But still," she said, picking up a handful of sand and watching it fall through her fingers as the late morning sun tinted in more golden, "you left me."
"I'm sorry."
Lapis nodded her head. Peridot could tell that although Lapis may have accepted her apology, she was not completely forgiven.
"Also, Amethyst called you a nerd. I thought you should know," Lapis said, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks.
Peridot huffed, blowing a strand of black hair out her eye. "If she didn't like Coke and onion rings so much I'd kill her."
Lapis sniggered. "Sure, sure. You just need to admit it, Peridot. Self-realization is the next step to happiness, y'know."
"Okay, now I'm confused." Peridot held up her hands. "Admit what?"
"You pretend to hate Amethyst, but you totally have this big lesbian crush on her!" Lapis blurted, still giggling, though Peridot failed to see what was so amusing – she was just looking at Lapis with a bewildered expression on her face.
"Okay, Janis Ian!" she laughed nervously. For some reason she had begun to feel anxious, and she couldn't figure out why. She knew that it wasn't true, so why was her mind running in circles?
"You know that's not true," she said.
Lapis snorted. "Oh, come on. Okay, what about Garnet? She's pretty hot. It's the sunglasses, I think. They make her all mysterious and enticing. Or maybe it's Jenny, she's really cute - "
"What are you on about?" Peridot finally interrupted. She was afraid that if Lapis kept talking, she might blush so hard Jasper could fry bacon on her face.
"This is the kind of thing friends talk about. It's the three Hs: hooch, hanhich, hot girls."
"Only if you're a pothead like you, dumbass. The only girl you'll ever want to talk about it Mary Jane!" Peridot gave Lapis a light shove into the sand.
She was shoved back by her smirking friend. "You spread such cruel lies about me, you really do." She clutched her heart dramatically. "I'll talk about other girls any time you want."
"What about Pearl?" Peridot said so quickly she wasn't even sure she'd really spoken. It was only the heavy, tense silence lying in the air around them like smoke and the half-bewildered, half-panicked expression on her friend's face that gave any indication of what was going on.
"What?" Lapis repeated, some laughter still in her voice, as if she was searching desperately for a joke.
Peridot picked at a loose thread on her shorts casually. There was no way to go back now she had started. She could only press on, even if she was afraid of what she might find out.
"I know," she finally decided to say, not bothering to beat around the bush, "about you and Pearl. Talk about lesbian crushes," she said, though there was no humour in her voice.
Lapis stilled, her entire posture ridged, her face blank. She stared out at the ocean, watching the waves crash back and forth over the shore, the only sound. Peridot stared at her.
After a long silence, in which Peridot didn't bother to press her friend for details, she finally spoke in a small, quiet, melancholy voice.
"It was Freshman year. We started dating in January. I made the first move. We had our first date in the arcade, and I beat her at air hockey ten times. But I don't think she really cared."
Peridot stayed quiet as Lapis told the story.
Her voice stayed monotonous the entire time, but Peridot got the feeling that Lapis was hiding a lot of anguish underneath. You could just see it in her eyes.
She continued, "We technically dated until June, but I don't really count that month. We just kind of … fell apart. It's not that romantic when you think about it. We weren't the modern day Romeo and Juliet. Maybe in the beginning. But I always got the feeling something wasn't quite right with us. We never felt like one of those couples that really liked each other. But maybe that's just me. She always seemed into it though. But I knew she was lying to herself. She always did reckon she was a good liar. But I could see straight through her.
"She was in love with Garnet even then. I think she always has been. But she knew it when she was going out with me; we were just lying to each other, together for the sake of being together. We even had sex. But I … I don't know. It seemed like such a big deal back then. But it didn't really feel like it to me. My first girlfriend, my first time, it's all supposed to be this huge deal, y'know? Rose petals and angels singing and violins in the background. But it just … wasn't. It just felt like a fake, plastic relationship. And it was. We both knew it was. But we were too stubborn to admit to ourselves that we were just puppets playing parts."
Lapis sighed, and Peridot wanted desperately to hold her, to comfort her, to show Lapis that she was there for her. But she knew that if she did, she would probably never let go. So she let her continue.
"One of us had to end it. In the end, it was me. And then we just let it go. I still think about it. But it was three years ago. There's not much I can do. And she got what she wanted. She's with Garnet now, and she's happy. But I still think about her. Not in a romantic way. I guess I – we're always gonna have each other in our minds."
"Did you get what you wanted?" Peridot asked quietly. Lapis didn't reply.
"Tell me about kissing girls," Peridot says. Lapis turns and looks at her for a few seconds, and for a moment Peridot thinks she isn't going to respond. But then she does, and her facial expression has changed in such a way that indicates to Peridot that they won't be talking about Pearl for a long while now.
"It's pretty much the same as kissing boys," Lapis says with a shrug.
"That's helpful," Peridot says.
Lapis gives her a look. "Okay, so it's not exactly the same … I, uh, don't really know how to explain it. It made me feel good inside, like I was somewhere I was meant to be. Their lips are soft, but also rough, and I could kinda taste chapstick. Raspberry chapstick … " she trailed off after a bit.
"That answer your question?" she raised an eyebrow.
Peridot nodded dumbly, then shook her head to get herself out of her thoughts.
"I understand why you didn't tell me, and I'm not going to bother you about it."
"That doesn't sound much like you," Lapis interrupted with a smirk.
"Would you shut up?" Peridot asked teasingly.
"It's okay. I don't mind talking about it. We had some fun times after all." Lapis broke off her sentence to laugh. "We tried to go to DelmarvaCon once. We we gonna go as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. But we couldn't get it, so we ended up walking around Charm City in our cosplays for five hours, looking for something to do. So, we went to the park, and a bunch of kids saw us and wanted to take our photos, and we ended up on the swings, not talking, just seeing who could go higher and higher and then jump off. Kinda hard to do in a short ass skirt.
"We used to do really cheesy romantic stuff too. All the clichés. I'd carry her bag for her, we'd kiss in the rain, even if she hated it and towel-dried my hair for me afterwards. We'd double-date all the time with Garnet and - " she stopped to cough, then continued, "with Garnet and Amethyst."
"Seriously? Has everyone been having a massive orgy and I just haven't noticed?" Peridot exclaimed.
"Ha, yeah. Though I'm not sure that's how I'd put it."
"Hmm. That explains why Amethyst doesn't care about any of Pearl and Garnet's romantic shit, then."
Lapis murmured something in reply.
"What?"
"I said I gotta go. I have a shit ton of Physics homework to do. And you know you've got that textbook work to do as well."
"Crap! I completely forgot. See, this is why I don't socialise more than four hours a day, it completely fucks up my homework schedule!"
Lapis stifled a laugh. "Amethyst was right. You are a nerd."
Peridot flipped her off as they stood up.
Lapis stretched. "You're lucky you got my ass out of bed this morning at all. My heart was hurting like crazy."
"You're totally going to wreck yourself one of these days, you know that?"
Lapis shrugged. "The good die young. See you later, alligator!" she called as she walked off the beach and out of sight.
Peridot sighed in exasperation as she watched her friend go, however as soon as she was gone her thoughts took over her mind, filling her brain to the brim with mania, like the plug had been pulled.
Today really has been a lot to take in, she thought as she walked home. Lapis' hair, for one thing, did funny things to Peridot's insides that she really didn't want to think about. And all that shit with Pearl just made her head hurt and her heart ache.
But what she really, really could not get her mind off was Lapis' description of kissing girls. It just seemed like it was sticking to her like cobwebs clinging to velvet.
"Soft, but also rough … " she muttered to herself. She'd never really thought about kissing before.
In her head, she tried to think of an attractive guy. She decided on Buck. he was considered pretty good-looking, right? Jenny and Sour Cream sure seemed to think so. So did loads of other girls.
She tried to picture kissing him. The image was like when the TV signal got interference from the rain. Nothing but glitches and static; however hard she tried she couldn't get a clear image in her head.
She shook her head. Lapis said it was supposed to feel good, to feel right.
She tried to think of an attractive girl next.
Shakily, she brought her hands up to her cheeks to see if they were warm from blush. She didn't know why the question made her feel this way. What worried her was the way that unlike when she thought about men, she immediately could think of a multitude of options.
Lapis was right – Garnet and Jenny were attractive. So was Pearl, admittedly, though the thought of the fact that her lips had touched lapis' was a bit off-putting. Amethyst was pretty hot, with her purple hair and tendency to latch herself onto people no matter how well she knew them.
And then .. there was Lapis.
Peridot's heart didn't so much do a somersault as it did five backflips in a row before throwing itself off a cliff.
Taking a deep breath, she imagined kissing Lapis.
Their lips gently pressing against each other, the fluttering of their eyelashes, feeling Lapis breathing in sync with her. Running a hand through Lapis' new short hair, tangling her fingers in the ends just as she had a habit to do so, as her tongue brushed her friend's bottom lip gently …
She brought a hand up to her lip as she exhaled softly, tracing it, as if imagining it was Lapis.
Suddenly, in her head, it was like changing channels. Lapis faded away from her fantasy, and in her place was … Jasper.
Jasper's calloused hands around her waist, her teeth scraping against Peridot's lip (harsh and animalistic, but also in a way the most loving thing Peridot would ever feel). Her long blonde hair falling against her tanned skin, perfect for endlessly running her fingers through. The way she looked in just a shirt and boxers, legs defined and smooth. asper was strong, but also gentle. She could probably lift Peridot up. She'd always be wary of harming her though …
Peridot started as she realised she'd reached her front door. She flicked herself in the head. This was reaching dangerous territory.
All these feelings bottled up inside of her, and she didn't know what to do with them.
All she knew was that they were unavoidable. She'd be seeing Lapis and Jasper at school tomorrow, and Jasper to work on the project. And she'd just had a daydream about kissing them. More than that with Jasper. Things had started to verge into a sort of romance, and she had no idea what to do with herself.
And for some reason, she was more concerned about, more preoccupied with Jasper than her best friend.
What she was thinking was unavoidable.
She groaned to herself. She knew for certain that this wasn't just something she could push to the back of her mind.
And it honestly scared her to death.
a/n: poor peridot ... so smol ... so gay ... so frustrated :c
i think i'll just let everyone digest this in the comments XD like peridot said, it's a lot to take in
fun fact: the bit with amethyst and the big lesbian crush was added after i watched 'too far' cause the amedot needed to be acknowledged. also it led nicely to the next bit
also i made myself really sad about lapis and pearlapis this chapter :0 the struggles of being a writer
sorry for not including much jasper, but she'll be back next chapter! and so will the history project (fucking finally)
please comment and tell me what you liked, what you want to see happen, predictions, theories, whatever you want! comments are my lifeblood
as always, thanks for reading! see you (hopefully, but no promises) in two or three weeks!