Chapter Text
When you met it was all fun and games.
Your roommate from last semester had transferred elsewhere and she was your new dorm mate, a freshman with bottle blonde hair hair and round, bespectacled green eyes and surprisingly similar interests. Peridot Olivine; she was polite, sweet, warm, and also a massive nerd. From the moment she’d moved in, you got along like you’d known each other for years.
You would carry on absent conversations as you both came and went, when you were free at the same time you would watch Camp Pining Hearts together (a passion only she knew you had) whilst criticising the writing, when she struggled with particularly tough Psych 101 homework you would help her, and she would return the favour with calculus. You fell into a comfortable symbiosis, and soon you knew her as one of your best friends.
Until you developed a crush on her.
You’d realized how far gone for her you were embarrassingly late into the process of falling head over heels. As first semester finals loomed, combined with the stress of extracurriculars, the two of you had hardly seen each other for well over a week, the longest drought since you’d known each other. To celebrate having some modicum of free time once more, you spent the evening together.
Well, to be fair, you’d planned to spend a little time with her before one of you inevitably got tired or some other obligation called your attention. But that moment didn’t come; you brought her to a roller skating rink just off of campus and didn’t leave until it had closed. You’d shared a lukewarm footlong chili dog and a plate of nachos smothered in artificial cheese product, then skated clumsily together to poppy synthesized 80s music.
The food was cheap and terrible, and you both crashed and fell into each other and the wall and the floor in your beat-up, rented skates with wheels not nearly tight enough. She got rug burn in the crook of her elbows from clutching the carpeted rink walls and you’d fallen flat on your face hard enough to bloody your own nose. Logically, you should have had a horrible time, but you couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend your night.
Seeing Peridot’s smiling face, laughing and quipping and making snide comments, hearing her cute, nasal voice and shocked yelps as her feet flew out from under herself; it made your cold heart beat with a vigour you hadn’t felt in years. At the end of the night, you’d shakily attempted something similar to a slow dance to fit the quiet, post-party songs playing. You laughed at yourselves as you noticed the only other people left in the rink were a pair of sixth grade boys who were, quite literally, skating circles around you.
The shop owner had come out from the back at midnight, shutting off the sound system and announcing closing. You’d turned your skates in and walked home in the cool night air, poking fun as Peridot shivered until you gave up your hoodie for her to wrap around her scrawny shoulders.
Upon making it back to the dorm, you both exhaustedly fell into your respective beds. Peridot’s soft snores arose only a few minutes after her mumbled goodnight, and you found yourself tiredly blinking at the ceiling as you waited to succumb to sleep. You’d spent more time than could possibly be considered reasonable reliving the events of the day; from the dance-skating and the shared dinner to the worried doting Peridot had done as she'd cleaned and bandaged your nose.
As you felt yourself begin to drift off, the one thought in your mind was that you felt happier than you’d ever been in your entire life.
Your eyes had snapped open in the darkness.
Oh, shit…
The next morning when you’d awoken, you’d told yourself you’d have to make some kind of change, that you’d have to keep away from her to stop yourself from falling any farther. You couldn't have feelings for her! She was your friend and nothing more, and it wouldn’t work out even if she were interested.
She’d come to your school from a state away, where her entire extended family and everything she knew was, and you knew she’d inevitably want to go back. There was no way she’d rewrite her life plan to wait for you to finish school and earn your doctorate (something even you doubted your ability to achieve.) It wouldn't go anywhere. It couldn’t.
The next morning when you’d seen her sleep-slackened face bid you a grumbly good morning, you’d felt that comfortable warmth bloom in your chest again and a taunting quip toward the disheveled state of her hair had slipped from your lips before you could stop it. She’d rolled her eyes and flashed a middle finger as she trudged toward the bathroom, and your face hurt from the grin that overtook it.
Yeah, there was no way you were going to stop hanging out with her.
Maybe it would be fine, you told yourself. It may not be likely but it was certainly possible. You could go on as friends, only with the small hurdle of one party being madly in love with the other, right?
Yeah okay, it didn’t sound as convincing when you thought it out. But one thing was certain, you couldn’t give up having Peridot in your life. There wasn’t a chance, and you also couldn’t bear the thought of ruining your friendship by trying to interject some crazy idea of romance. You could suppress your feelings; it would all be fine.
Okay, maybe things hadn’t gone exactly fine. When her birthday rolled around, you shelled out almost every cent you had to your name in order to buy her a perfect gift, certainly more than any innocent college friend would offer. It had proved very much worth it when you had given it to her, however; she had adored it and beamed gratefulness and affection in bucketfuls. No amount of money was an object compared to the pride that swelled in your chest to know you had made her happy.
You found yourself getting braver as time went on and your feelings only reinforced themselves into your mind. You would wink and joke and flirt, and blush at Peridot’s occasional reciprocation. You forced her into listening to songs you liked as a guise to share love songs that made you think of her when they came on the radio. You traded the odd ‘I love you’ during nights spent together, but it was bittersweet because you knew she didn’t mean the same thing you did when she said it.
You found yourself spending a night or two every other week falling into a depression about your situation. You were in love with a girl who would never feel the same about you, she was going to have fun with you as a friend until it wasn’t convenient anymore, eventually she would move on with her life and find new people that meant more to her than you could ever possibly hope to. You’d never admit it, but your pillowcases felt salty tears more than once in the dead of night as you contemplated the inevitable time when Peridot Olivine would be little more than a name of someone you once knew.
But you were fine, things were fine! Or at least that’s what you told yourself when you took a discreet photo of her deeply entranced in a game of Overwatch and set it as your phone background. And when you made plans to travel with her over the summer that didn’t really carry any weight. And when you “ironically” greeted her on Valentine’s Day with a bright green-dyed rose between your teeth and a pile of shoddily-made construction paper valentines. And when you bit your tongue to keep from moaning her name each night as you came beneath your own fingers.
You found a small way to outlet your passion when your creative writing professor came down with the flu that winter and cancelled that day’s lecture, sending an email to the class instructing you simply to write a short story about someone you loved. You had seen the opportunity and put months of longing into four hundred fifty-three words that Rose Quartz had said was the best work from the whole class.
You pinned the assignment with the A grade enclosed in a star drawn in pink gel pen to the wall of your side of the the dorm, and one morning you found Peridot reading it with a watery gleam in her eyes. You had felt your heart threatening to claw its way from your rib cage until she had turned to you with something unreadable on her face and said,
“What the fuck, Lapis, that was beautiful.”
You were sure then that she must have known, but nothing changed. You continued on with your friendship as usual, until one morning a few weeks later when Peridot shoved a folded piece of notebook paper into your hands only a few minutes after you’d rolled from bed. Before you could ask what it was, she had practically sprinted into the bathroom.
You sat down on the kitchenette counter, unfolded the paper, and began reading. By the time you finished, there were tears on your cheeks. On the page there was a short story, similar to yours but different in the best way. The prose ended with the first and only line of dialogue; a question, one character asking the other to travel the world with them by their side. A voice in the back of your head wanted to believe that question meant something, but you wouldn't let yourself believe it. You slid from the counter.
After drying your tears, you spoke.
“Peridot, did you write this?”
From the bathroom her quiet voice replied, “Maybe.” Her blonde head poked out from behind the door. “It didn’t come out like I planned.”
“Shut up, that was beautiful. I’m literally crying,” you pointed out as you folded the paper back up and placed it on the table.
She’d stepped from the room the rest of the way, fingers tangled in each other. “Hey, uhm. The part at the end is- it’s actually... for you.”
Your whole body had frozen in place, chest dancing with hope you hadn’t dared to feel since that fateful night in the roller rink.
“Will you go out with me?”
Your entire universe had imploded in one sentence; time slowed down and sped up at once and you couldn’t remember speaking but your mouth was open and agape and you could tell from Peridot’s reaction that you must have forced out a frantic, enraptured yes in your stupor. You had lifted her into your arms and spun her around like in the movies, laughing and smiling until your cheeks hurt as you gazed into that face you knew you’d gladly spend the rest of your life gazing at.
“Can I kiss you?” you’d breathed as if it were a prayer.
“Yes, you clod.”
From then, it was all fun and games again.