Chapter Text
The place Peridot knew wasn’t exactly her place. What it was a mountain cabin complex owned by DDC that was reserved and used frequently throughout the year for team building exercises. Peridot had been there once, a horrible experience that involved a lot of being outside, and trust falls, and one agonizingly long game of baseball. However, what with it being summer and many employees taking their children on vacation, the cabin was empty for the majority of the month, and definitely available for the weekend. Peridot attempted to book it, which came with a sizable fee, but other than that there was no trouble.
Granted, she didn’t mention that she intended to bring several guests who didn’t work for the company, but they didn’t need to know that.
She had sent a text to Connie, and just like when she texted Steven she was prepared for Connie not to respond. If she did get a response, she imagined it would be something about shoving the invite up her ass. But, apparently, Connie was more like Steven that Peridot could have ever imagined. She agreed to come almost immediately.
It was actually Lapis who required the most convincing, as she wasn’t thrilled about leaving the shop closed all weekend. Peridot cajoled and pleaded, slowly turning her girlfriend’s “maybe I should work” into an “I guess if it’s for Steven.”
“You know,” Peridot fumed, crossing her arms and glaring as Lapis nursed a bottle of wine. “This isn’t normal girlfriend behavior.”
She paused, holding up her drink. “I’m not an alcoholic. I’m just too lazy to get a glass.”
“Not that!” she snapped. “I’m inviting you to go on a trip with me and you’re just… you don’t want to go. You should just want to go on a trip with me.”
She shrugged. “Maybe we’re just friends with benefits then.”
“That’s way too casual.”
She rolled her eyes. “You figure it out then. I don’t really care about labels.”
Of course she didn’t. Peridot cared about labels quite a bit, but no matter how she attempted to discussion sexual orientation with her “girlfriend”, Lapis seemed utterly unconcerned. More often than not she would insist that Peridot’s sexuality wasn’t her business - which would be a lovely sentiment from anyone she wasn’t currently having sex with. However, it didn’t. It came from Lapis, and that made it infuriating.
Despite the complications, they ended up going up to the cabins in separate cars. That left three cars in the lot and the rest of the space sitting big and empty. Only Steven and Lapis had shared, which was surprising, because she didn’t know Connie had access to a car. She didn’t think Connie was old enough to rent a car either. However, asking Connie about it would be the kind of chitchat that she felt might not be well-received given current events.
The cabin itself was pleasant enough, a nice combination of wilderness and civilization. It had electricity, running water, plumbing, but there wasn’t any cable or wifi. There was a clear signal for a mobile connection, and a landline phone attached to the wall. Peridot did have unlimited data, so in theory she could hide in her room working all day, but she was going to do her best to resist temptation. She was supposed to be relaxing. And she was supposed to be quitting that job soon.
Steven looked around the main room, praising the simple beige interior like the ray of sunshine he always was. He spun in a circle and asked, “Do we have assigned bedrooms?”
Lapis hopped onto the couch, drawling, “There’s only two beds. So you and Connie go downstairs and we’ll go upstairs. Does that work?” She looked back at him, snorting at the flush that covered Steven’s face. “I’m kidding. Don’t blow a fuse.”
“There’s four rooms, Steven.” Connie giggled, and boldly reached out to pat his shoulder. “I asked Peridot. They’re all the same, so just put your stuff wherever you want.”
“Where are you putting your stuff?” he asked immediately.
Peridot watched as the three of them discussed rooming arrangements. Honestly, she didn’t care much which room she ended up with, but they all seemed to care a lot. Connie chose the bottom left room, citing it as the closest to the door and therefore putting her on the frontlines if anyone broke in. It seemed that being a Knight really was a big part of who she was. Steven, ever the loyal pup, claimed the room next to hers, but followed her into the one she had claimed.
Lapis sprawled across the couch, all moody and pretty. Her eyes glinted which mischief, which Peridot felt like she should really avoid. She was not the kind of girl who made trouble. She kept her head down. She didn’t get involved - just like at work.
“What are you looking at?”
Lapis chuckled. “Do you want to help me mess with them this weekend?”
She frowned. “They’re kinda fragile right now, aren’t they?”
“Oh, no. Not like that.” She rolled over on her belly. She smiled, and thankfully it wasn’t one of her mean ones. “I was just going to tease them about crushing on each other, like the bed thing.”
Peridot grinned. “Like a matchmaker.”
“But with huge asshole vibes.”
“It’s you. What other vibes could there be?”
She hopped onto the couch beside Lapis, throwing her feet up on her lap. It was cozy already, everything quiet, some nature sounds outside setting the mood. Lapis stretched out all the more, peering up at the ceiling, and her voice was quiet. “I did a lot of
work keeping them apart. I thought maybe this could balance it out. Is that so bad?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” Her eyes flicked back. “But there’s nothing else to do in this place.”
Peridot agreed, but she was proven wrong once again. There were plenty of things to do, and all you needed was a pair of adventurous young adults to access them. Peridot and Lapis followed along behind them as Steven and Connie set out to explore one of the trails. Lapis, at least, seemed to understand the routine. She had been friends with these kinds of classes before, the rough and physical type, and Peridot let her take the lead.
Apparently, the proper method was to act as a camp counselor. Steven and Connie raced around, pointed out trees and plants and discussing the possibilities of rocks - none of which Peridot could understand or find interesting in the slightest. Who cared if something was a quartz? Who cared if a tree was a maple? Apparently, they did, and though Lapis had little to contribute, she nodded along and encouraged them as if the age difference between them was decades instead of a handful of years.
But they both checked out around the time Steven and Connie started free climbing cliffs. Peridot leaned against a broad tree beside Lapis. “Are you having fun?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“I know this really isn’t your thing,” she said, and then added, “It’s not mine either. But you’re good at this stuff. I mean, with Steven. Probably not anyone else.”
Lapis looked down at her. “I was really worried about him when he didn’t show up for work.”
She stiffened. What was she supposed to say to that? Oh yeah, Lapis, I was worried too. He’s your best friend, Lapis, of course you were worried about him. Hey, I know you were worried about him, but don’t worry, he was only losing his mind alone in his house totally overwhelmed with no idea what to do next, and he’s basically forcing me to quit my job in order to stay friends with him. Do you think the tree we’re leaning against is a maple?
“I’m doing this all wrong.” She groaned, crossing her arms. “I mean… thanks. Thank you for talking to him, and for setting this up. You’re a really good friend for him.”
“You’re welcome.”
Talking had never been their strong suit as a couple. They didn’t say much more after that, just standing side by side in comfortable silence. There was a bit of warmth on her face from Lapis’s compliment, thought as they day turned to afternoon, the chill began to take it away. She was all for comfortable silence, but as time crept by she wasn’t all for watching two jocks scamper over a pile of rocks. Her internal timer reached thirty minutes and she muttered, “When are they going to stop climbing?”
“Oh, we’ll have to order them back to the cabin,” Lapis said with a little snort. “They’re bash ‘em classes. They’ll do this for hours if nobody stops them.”
Dear God. She had really brought them here, on the brink of wilderness, where they could be their little feral selves. The weekend would be full of sports, and jogging, and hiking, and she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t do any of it. She wasn’t supposed to. They should be carrying her while she cradled her cell phone and argued on Camp Pining Hearts forums. She pouted up at Lapis. “Yeah, there’s nothing else to do here. I want to mess with them.”
“Knew you’d come around.”
Eventually, they managed to drag them back to the cabin where everyone immediately entered a debate about whether ordering pizza the first night was against the spirit of camping. Peridot voted for pizza, but other than that wasn’t interested in arguing. Instead, she wondered about how she could keep up with Lapis in messing with the younger two. Magnetic powers weren’t often useful, even when working in computers. In fact, one could easily argue that magnetic powers were more likely to ruin things than fix them when hard drives were involved.
Peridot fiddled with a steak knife as the other three bickered. Her magic was fairly weak, borderline underleveled, so she didn’t expect to be successful with almost anything she did. She gave a push with all the magic she had, and the knife in her hand zoomed between three faces. It slammed into the drywall, burying itself all the way down to the hilt.
Conversation came to a stop and Steven cleared his throat. “Peridot, would you like to say something?”
She covered her eyes and looked away. “Let’s just get pizza.”
Lapis put the pieces together, and mouthed a sarcastic “wow” and shook her head, making Peridot blush. She looked cocky, and with a discrete little move put a thin sheet of ice on the floor, right in Steven’s path on his way to the landline phone. Connie managed to catch him by the forearms, getting him upright as the two ended up pressed up against each other, just for a moment, before they both blushed and giggled out apologies.
Lapis slid over to stand next to her. “Teasing doesn’t usually involve knives.”
“It was a warm-up,” she hissed.
“Are you going to kill them next time?”
“Lazuli!”
This was clearly some kind of competition. Peridot had no idea what the rules were, or what the win condition was, Lapis was clearly ahead with her little ice trick. Peridot brainstormed while they waited for the pizza to arrive, but her head stayed up. How exactly did you make two awkward young adults feel flustered about romance?
To be perfectly honest, romance was never something that Peridot understood. Everything appealing about it seemed like something that was worth doing with any good friend, and the stuff that remained just didn’t seem like a good time at all. She doubted that Steven and Connie would get flustered watching a movie together, unless she set up candles everywhere, and she couldn’t imagine that setting up candles would really do much to change the mood anyway.
The physical side of it made a lot more sense to her. Touch got Steven and Connie flustered, and Connie no longer seemed repulsed by it ever since her memory was unlocked. She thought that making them touch each other, like Lapis did with the ice, seemed easy enough. The problem with that was that any time either of them was touching metal, it tended to be something with a sharp point at the end. An accidental jerk there and someone might end up bloody - which could lead to a romantic hurt/comfort scene if fanfiction was to be believed, but Peridot was certain that the moment blood entered the picture it was no longer considered “lighthearted”.
She’d never done anything like this before. She had always just been direct with anyone she found cute, and from there it was all a matter of fumbling along with whatever her partner wanted to do. Now that she thought about it, it was pretty similar to the way she was at work. And at everything, really. She saw an opportunity for something normal, something stable, and she took it, and followed along with whatever seemed right at the time.
Peridot paused, a bite of pizza halfway to her lips. “I don’t know what I want.”
Steven raised red pepper flakes. “These are pretty good.”
That wasn’t what she had meant. She meant everything, all the big picture life stuff. She didn’t know what she wanted from her job, or from Lapis, or from anything. She was just doing what she felt like she was supposed to, and that had ended with her as some kind of accessory to monsterification, and working for an evil corporation, and in a relationship that she liked but was kind of a horrible, undefined mess.
She sprinkled on red pepper flakes and thought all the more.