Chapter Text
Lapis rolled over in bed at the exact moment Peridot opened her eyes, a terrifying feat that Peridot feared could be replicated for the rest of their lives. Lapis propped her head up on her hand and asked, “How good are you at messing with TVs?”
“What?” She groaned as she rubbed sleep from her eyes, struggling to wake up after her late night adventure. She hoped the groan sounded pitiful enough that Lapis would give her a break, but no such luck was found.
“What tech can you mess with? Can you make the TV play porn or something?” There was an awkward silence as the two stared at each other for at least a full minute. Peridot normally would have interrupted, but her brain was still attempting to process if she had misunderstood the request - because she must have misunderstood the request.
Lapis coughed. “Not for me. To mess with Steven and Connie.”
That still didn’t help with the explanation. She did not want to know what Lapis’s plan could be, as as someone who didn’t particularly enjoy porn, she had no interest with getting it on the screen. She sat up in bed and explained, “It’s not a smart TV, so my skillset is pretty limited. I can mess with hardware, but accessing channels I normally can’t is more trouble than its worth. Also it’s a stupid plan.”
Lapis groaned and buried her face in a pillow. “I know. I’m not good at not being mean.”
She snickered as the two of them worked to get dressed, pulling on clothes, and Peridot mused to herself what might be something non-catastrophic to play matchmaker with their friends. Neither of their skills seemed particularly good for pranks, aside from Lapis’s ability to make people wet, which seemed petty at best.
“Connie’s car has an onboard computer,” she said thoughtfully as she tied the drawstring of her pants. “I could sabotage that in a number of ways without detection, and fix it immediately after.”
“To kill her?”
“No!” she cried. “What is wrong with you? I was just thinking that we could maybe get Steven and Connie ride home alone together.”
“Doesn’t really seem like a prank,” Lapis said. “If we can’t see them be awkward what’s the point?
She shrugged as she pulled on a hoodie. “Helping our friends get together? Being nice?”
“Since when you do care about being nice?”
If it was anyone other than Lapis, she might have taken it as an insult. But it was Lapis, and she looked more confused than anything. She wondered how to explain that she didn’t know what she was doing, or what the right thing was, and that up until recently her life had been fairly simple in terms of ethics. Those were someone else’s problem. Well, they used to be.
“I missed up, so I’m trying to be better. That’s all.”
“Are you having an arc?” she accused.
“You had one. Why can’t I have one?”
She shrugged. “Just feels like it’s pushing the boundaries of an interesting story. It’s not very dramatic.”
“I work for evil!”
“Lots of people work for evil, that doesn’t mean they’re interesting.” She scoffed. “You just deleted some text files. You didn’t try to kill someone or anything.”
She gawked with disbelief. “Are you seriously going to bitch that me becoming a better person isn’t interesting enough for you?”
“I’m not breaking up with you or anything.” She grinned. I’m just letting you know that you’re boring.”
Peridot hesitated. Lapis was joking, but there was still something under it that left her uncertain. “If we’re not breaking up, is this… what’s the future of us? Do you want to get married someday or…?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.” She sat back on the bed with a sigh. “Honestly, if you’re looking for romance, I don’t think that’s ever going to be me. It’s not about being a better person. I can be a better friend or partner or whatever this is. But romance just…”
Peridot smiled a bit. “Me neither. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Okay, so, then we just keep going.” She waved her hand between the two of them. “We hang out. We have sex. Is this enough, or do you have to grow up like Steven and find someone better?”
“Growing up doesn’t have anything to do with being with you or not, okay? You’re a shitty person, Lapis. Not an immature one.” She said flatly. Lapis looked oddly pleased at that, and Peridot loosely batted her shoulder. “Listen, as far as I can tell, we’re in the same boat. We like the way things are and we don’t want them to change.”
“Fuck all conventions,” she said. “We’re us. And we can call it whatever we want, and do whatever we want, and it’s nobody’s business.”
It was quiet just for a moment, just the slightest bit of hesitation, and then Peridot confessed, “Sex is fun, but I don’t think I really experience attraction. And I’m like you about romance. I just don’t care about it.” She side-eyed Lapis, waiting for a tantrum or some other reaction to erupt.
“Can you still tell me I’m hot?” she asked.
Peridot blinked. “I… yeah. That’s fine.”
“Then we’re good. Just don’t tell me all the time that you’re not attracted to me. That’d bum me out.”
Lapis strode out of the bedroom in flannel pajama bottoms as if nothing of note had happened, and, Peridot supposed, nothing especially had. There were new words to learn, maybe, but she didn’t feel too different about confessing that she was aroace, even if it was the first time she had really put it into words. It had always been true, after all. She had always kind of known it about herself.
It was a little disappointing that there was no thrill or excitement to it, but she had always been unorthodox about these things. She followed her girlfriend out. Her partner. Her queer platonic friend. Her fuck buddy? Labels were less easy than action, and the action that came easiest was sharing leftover cold pizza with everyone else in their group.
“No coffee?” she asked around a mouthful of carbs.
Steven sighed. “No. All they have is a drip machine.”
“So?” Peridot frowned. ‘What’s wrong with drip coffee?”
Apparently this was not something to say in a room full of coffee snobs. She endured about thirty minutes of heated debate on every side of her. There was talk of milk and cream, of grind size and extraction, of water temperature and country of origin. Her uncaffeinated mind struggled to keep up, and finally she held her hands up in surrender. “Alright! I won’t touch the drip machine. I’ll just suffer.”
But that led to an immediate idea, and she lied, “I’m going to try to wake up in the sun since I can’t have coffee.”
She did go outside, but it had nothing to do with any desire to get some sun. Frankly, the sun was her enemy, and if she never saw it again in favor of server rooms and engineering labs she would be all the better for it. What she wanted to do was temporarily ruin Connie’s car, even if she felt a touch guilty about it.
Of course, once she touched the car her guilt immediately vanish. Magic pushed through her fingers, popping the lock open without complaint, and she got a little shiver from the rush that came from working with magic and tech. With a quick check that no one was coming, she slide into the driver’s seat to examine the computer onboard.
It was complicated, but she was good at her job. She went with an easy break and easy fix, disabling the push start. Anyone with experience in her field could fix it, but she was the only one around. That combined with the limited internet access would leave Connie with a car she couldn’t fix, and classes she needed to get to.
If they kissed on the car ride home, Peridot was fairly certain that would be a win in whatever game she was playing with Lapis.
An hour later, and Connie Maheswaran was panicking just the right amount for Peridot to feel a touch of guilt. The fighter slammed the car door shut behind her, yelping, “It won’t start! I don’t know what I did wrong!”
“It’s probably a dead battery or something,” Steven said comfortingly, tucking his own keys back in his pocket. “Don’t worry.”
“It’s my mom’s car,” she fretted. “If I broke it she’s going to kill me.”
“I feel like you should be able to maneuver the whole brainwashed by evil thing into getting off the hook for a few times,” Lapis said dryly. “Your mom can’t be that strict.”
Connie let out a bark of laughter, and Peridot hopped into the driver’s seat. She pretended she was looking at the screen for the first time, took a few moments to really play up the idea that she had to figure out what was wrong. She looked back at Connie and said a chipper, “It’s not bad! I can fix this.”
“You can?” she gasped, looking relieved.
“Yeah,” she said, looking back at the car to make lying a bit easier. “It’ll take a few hours, but it’s easy. It just takes some time to get everything reconnected.”
That didn’t make any sense, but no one picked up on it. Connie was too busy cringing, rambling about her morning class, worrying that her professor wouldn’t understand why she had missed the class when she had otherwise excellent attendance, and she really wasn’t the type to no-call no-show, because that was just rude .
It was agonizingly long before Steven took the bait and suggested, “I could drive you.”
“And leave the car here?”
“I can drive it down when I’m down with it.” Peridot said, hopping out. “I’ll drop it off at Rose’s Fountain for you and you can take it to your mom.”
“That’s too much. I can’t ask you guys to do that.” She shook her head.
Social niceties were truly the most obnoxious thing in the world. Peridot rolled her eyes and snapped, “I want to do it, okay? I’m a nerd. I like working with tech. Give me the keys and go with Steven already.”
Lapis leaned on Peridot’s head. “Gives us a chance to have this place to ourselves anyway.”
“Oh my gosh. Thank you!” Connie shuffled a little on her feet, then quickly reached out to give Peridot’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.
It wasn’t a hug, but it was a lot for the girl in front of her. Peridot’s heart fluttered with the thought that maybe she could pull off this nice thing in her own way. That maybe she could be a good friend now that she was really trying.
They all gathered their things, and soon Steven and Connie had settled into his car and were heading down the gravel road. Lapis’s gaze followed the car with a bit of bitterness, a small amount of jealousy, but she didn’t say anything and Peridot wasn’t going to bring it up. Her girlfriend looked down at her and grudgingly admitted, “That was pretty great.”
Peridot slapped the hood of Connie’s car, and the hybrid instantly sprung to life with a soft purr. Her other hand pushed the keys into Lapis’s hand. “I know it was. Now drive me to the nearest coffee place. The nearest . Not the best.”
Lapis looked down at the keys, then back to her. “I don’t know which is hotter, you need or caffeine or the felony.”
“After the lecture I got this morning over a Mr. Coffee machine, it better be the caffeine.”
They bickered about where to get coffee. They bickered about what drinks to get at the coffee place. They ate fast food breakfast sandwiches and bantered about how the eggs were so perfectly uniform and round. Lapis offered to stay with Peridot for the day, as long as they didn’t have anything to do.
By that night, Peridot had moved out of her apartment and into Lapis’s, with no romance, no engagement, no desperate need to be together. There was no incoming breakup from a lack of spark between them, and no worries that attraction was the only thing holding them together. She was living with her partner, and it wasn’t a big deal. It was fine.
It meant she never had to work for Diamond Days ever again, and that was even better.