Chapter Text
Pearl didn’t necessarily talk to Lapis as a person herself, despite the massive amounts of snooping she’s done when walking around the beach or town with Steven, until she caught Lapis doing some chores on month three, week one, day three.
“Lapis, what are you doing?”
The glass in Lapis’ hands drops back into the soapy warm water with a plop, resulting in another flinch accompanying the one Lapis was in the process of. She takes a step back and flicks her wrists, water and suds splashing onto the counter with a grimace.
When she turns to the side to see who the voice belonged to-- Pearl. The look she’s giving makes Lapis want to shrink a bit more, frantically looking for the dish towel, grabbing it and hastily drying her hands, giving them something to do. Calm down. Breathe.
“Nothing! Nothing at all.” The shorter of the two answers, gaze keeping away from Pearl, who is stepping off from the Warp Pad, brows knitting into an unintentional scowl, trying to piece together the scene.
Lapis Lazuli was… doing dishes?
Pearl’s hands come together, looking from the ocean gem to the soapy, water-logged and dishe-filled catastrophe she created. She is trying her hardest to not just march forward, push her “guest” away to fix everything up to how she does it. Every single day.
But instead, she steps closer to be at a reasonable distance from the other, both equally rigid and still like the gemstones on each of them.
“Uh huh…. Lapis, you do know that I do the dishes, right?” Pearl asks, talking slowly, cautious of every word she’s using.
“I know. But I thought I’d… give it a try?” Lapis replies, shrugging her shoulders afterwards with an attempt to give a sheepish smile. “Steven suggested I help you out, he even showed me how to do it.” She motions to the sink with a nod of her head.
“Of course he did.” Pearl muttered, shoulders hiking up as she pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes squeezing shut. Then, she takes a breath before walking to the counter, sure to go around Lapis, and rummage her hands in the sink, finding the sponge inside and undoing the plug, water draining down noisily.
“So tell me, Lapis…. how exactly did Steven… instruct you how to do this?” She finally asks, arranging the dirty, soapy dishes up to not be a mess in the sink. Lapis circles around to observe more efficiently, constantly looking from Pearl’s hands working on the task to her face, trying to read her expression.
“He just said rub the dishes with warm water and soap with the sponge before putting it in a stack to dry.” Lapis answers, then tapping a still-wet and obviously soapy plates set to the side. It just makes Pearl’s skin crawl.
“Well…” Pearl starts, reaching over to grab said plates and putting them on the “unwashed” ones. “He was not wrong. But there’s more than just that. You have to sponge up the filth from these plates, bowls and… everything else. But you have to rinse away the soap and anything you scraped off. Otherwise, it’s pointless.” As she instructs, she turns on the tap. With one soapy sponge in hand and plate in the other, she starts scrubbing away, top and bottom, then rinses it under the stream. “Like this. Then you dry it with a towel… like you have, right now.”
She then offers the plate to Lapis, who stares at it for a moment longer than was necessary before taking it, sure to be careful of it’s slick, clean surface.
“Like if you were drying your own hands. When it’s dry, put it aside on the counter. We can put them away when they’re all done.” Pearl says.
They trade off who washes and dries halfway through, Pearl trying her hardest to patient, and Lapis to be gentle. They don’t talk further than that, air heavy with tension.
Lapis got the rhythm of it easily enough, mumbling the steps to herself when scrubbing and rinsing. Drying and placing. She was intent that her hands touched anything but Pearl’s, and almost broke that when hearing the door slam with someone returning, head whipping with wide, borderline-panicked eyes.
Steven gasps loudly when seeing both Pearl and Lapis standing next to each other, Pearl with a sponge and glass mug in each hand, and Lapis holding a plate and dish towel.
“You guys are working together!” He exclaims with glee, hands clenching into fists to shake a bit as he grinned enthusiastically.
That was the last time they ever worked together, to Steven’s dismay. Everything past that point was rougher. Clashing. Lapis hangs out with Amethyst, she gets scolded as if she were Steven. She goes out and tries to get to know the Cool Kids, pick up their lingo, she gets rolled eyes.
Heaven forbid she shares anything about how she feels around Steven. It got to a point that Lapis doesn’t even try contributing to the chores, not after she tried doing the laundry with Pearl in hopes of things being calmer. It just ended in yelling, Steven losing one of the many shirts he owns, and Lapis flying off for a one week and three days.
“Steven was worried sick about you the whole time, you know.” Pearl mentioned as Lapis was fixing herself a sandwich later that day. He finally left the house since her return, out for some movie with Connie.
“Yeah.” Lapis replies numbly, brows furrowed in a scowl as she went through the motions.
“Yeah? That’s all you have to say?” Pearl fumes, crouching down and shooting back up with some new dirty laundry in her hands. “He thought you were going back to Homeworld! Without an explanation or-”
“I wouldn’t. I’m back, and he shouldn’t worry anymore. Or you, for that matter.” Lapis interjects, closing the fridge with the heel of her foot, shooting Pearl a tired glare as she went to sit on the couch, not feeling or tasting anything as she took a bite.
Of all the Crystal Gem’s, Pearl probably is the worst to her. But she also has the past bias of hearing and seeing her every single time she summoned the mirror.
Lapis takes every opportunity to bring it up, after that.