Chapter Text
It begins with the mountains.
It begins with a stagnancy, too. Monotony never kills, but it dulls the senses—and it feels as if the edges of Lapis Lazuli’s gem have been dull for centuries. Truthfully, it’s only been five years since Steven Universe set off on his road trip across the States, and only seven years since Lapis has started working with everyone else at Little Homeschool. Seven years of art piling all over Lapis’ classroom, seven years of greeting new students before watching them graduate, seven years of a stagnancy thicker than the orange juice pulp gathering at the bottom of her cup in the mornings. Stagnant water is always eerie, too much like the still surface of the mirror Lapis had pressed her bruised palms against for six thousand years, and so, in some ways, it’s like she’s trapped all over again. She doesn’t mean for this to keep happening, but it always finds her, one convoluted way or another. Stagnancy lets her grow complacent. Complacency feels like a suspension, of her life in the deep bodies of water she has once been submerged underneath and of her breath in sharp pants when all the waves crushed her beneath their pressure until she had no choice but to bite back. Suspension feels like a mirror.
So. It all comes back to this. It begins with Lapis holding a paintbrush limply in her hand, more occupied with training her gaze on the way the Sun follows the dips and slopes of Peridot’s face as the other Gem rambles happily about the state of her plants. Innovative suggestions from her students on how to improve the life of her plants, apparently. Something about watering, sunlight, but Lapis isn’t listening as much as she should be. She’s busy staring at how when Peridot tilts her head back far enough, Lapis can see the blocked outline of her flat eyelashes that usually go unnoticed. She’s busy trying to find the line where Peridot the Gem ends, and Peridot the ideal starts.
“…Mountains of homework to grade, of course, but to the point where I’m not certain it’s worth it anymore,” Peridot’s saying. “I mean, how much does homework really help my students? Is it even beneficial for them, for me, to assign work like this when it all simply becomes busy work?”
Lapis blinks steadily at the warm yellow shading the line of Peridot’s jaw. “I’ve never seen mountains.”
Peridot is thrown off-track, briefly, before she turns fully to give Lapis an owlishly wide-eyed look. “Not even in pictures?!”
Lapis gives her an exasperated smile. “Okay, yes, in pictures. But not in person. I haven’t seen many things.” Even after seven years, she hasn’t explored this world the way she vowed to herself with Steven dangling from her arms and the wind in her hair. Does that make her a bad person, or one who doesn’t keep their promises? She elects not to think about it.
Peridot dons a more contemplative look, sinking back into Lapis’ beanbag after jolting up so suddenly. “Hmm… now that you mention it, neither have I. We’ve been busy with Little Homeschool, after all…”
And then she does that thing where she fully loses herself in her thoughts, only occasionally muttering her findings out loud for Lapis to pick up on. Lapis leaves it at that and tries to continue painting. But she can’t focus on the canvas in front of her when Peridot is right there, a soft glow amidst the knowns of Lapis’ art room she witnesses every day, so she gives up after a few minutes and just stares at Peridot instead.
Peridot is odd. Most Gems stick to the clothing their light forms summon themselves with, but not Peridot. She likes human clothes, likes to dress up even if Lapis can’t understand wanting to put something on the body that itches and drags and carries this awful weight whenever, wherever. T-shirts, hoodies, shorts, funny boxers just for—Peridot has a closet, of all things, in their shared bedroom they’ve slowly begun to spend less and less time in.
Lapis doesn’t like to think about it. Everything keeps changing, just like the Earth, and the time they spent in that barn together without the faintest idea of Time bearing down on their shoulders feels more and more foreign to her. Wispy memories: she’s only faintly able to recall what it had felt like to sit beside Peridot on their roof to watch the Sun rise, Pumpkin nestled between them with gentle snores, no expectations weighing them down.
Sometimes, she wishes the world would stop spinning. That she could go back, even if only for a moment, to the meep-morps decorating their barn and the crops awaiting harvest. Despite the fact that she knows things are better now, that she’s better now… She misses it. She misses Peridot. She misses their old life, even if it only lasted for a couple months. It was different from the thousands of years that passed in a blur; Lapis remembers those months clearer than anything she witnessed in the mirror. She likes to think she cherishes them.
Does Peridot? She has to, doesn’t she? Her green thumb, cultivated from her delightful laughs ringing in Lapis’ ears at the success of their first round of crops. These must be memories she treasures as much as Lapis does.
“How about we go on a road trip?”
This time, it’s Lapis’ turn to glance up in alarm. Peridot is already staring at her, her eyes glittering and inquisitive. Hopeful. Can they do that? Lapis can feel a small excitement kicking alive in her chest, a soft thump-thump-thump like a rabbit’s, a joy just as hopeful as the bright flecks dancing in Peridot’s eyes. Can they steal this time from the world, just the two of them, for nothing but their own pleasure?
“Wouldn’t we be copying Steven?” Is all Lapis is able to get out, breathless.
Peridot snorts, and the thumping in Lapis’ chest spikes painfully at the mere sound. “Aren’t we always? Besides, we’d be doing it for vastly different reasons! He drove to all thirty-nine states on a journey of self-discovery. We’re venturing the country to… have fun!”
Have fun. Lapis smiles, and it only deepens when Peridot returns it with the full force of her sunny grin. What a nice thought.
“Sure. Let’s have fun.”
It’s a sedan. An old, beat-up one, but usable nonetheless. She gives it a light kick, and it wobbles like pudding.
Pumpkin, the excited thing, has been circling Peridot’s feet and yipping happily for the past ten minutes or so. Peridot hasn’t bothered to lean down and wrangle her into her arms, so every time she moves it subsequently leads to her tripping over Pumpkin’s tail flailing after her. Like right now. She tries to step back to examine the car once again, but she stumbles over Pumpkin zipping between her legs. She makes a noise not dissimilar to the little gourd’s, falling back, but Lapis doesn’t even need to blink before a gentle, watery hand darts out and catches her.
“I mean, it’s got to be sufficient, right?” Peridot says coolly in lieu of addressing her blunder.
She doesn’t stand up again, instead leaning her weight further into the hand. The small of Peridot’s back burns in a soft thrum against the low of Lapis’ water-palm, a vague feeling that tingles in her head. A hum, a song, Peridot, of Peridot—
“You’re leaving.”
She whips around to find Garnet standing a short ways away, expression unreadable as always. How long has she been there?
“Oh, Garnet! Hello!” Peridot jumps up out of Lapis’ water-palm to greet the other Gem.
“I have Steven here,” she holds up a laptop in one hand, and his smiling face beams through the electronic screen.
“Steven!!” The both of them burst out happily.
They start to chatter amongst themselves, with Garnet balancing between Pumpkin jumping up to lick her face and Peridot grabbing the laptop to talk rather enthusiastically to Steven, and Lapis lets herself lean against the sedan to watch them. It’s in moments like these that she soaks herself in the nostalgia. Steven, shorter and stouter, had spent plenty of time with her and Peridot in the barn. The three of them huddled by the television watching an episode of Camp Pining Hearts they already knew by heart, Peridot reciting every line under her breath against Lapis’ arm and Steven snoring softly against the other: there were meep-morps they collaborated on; there was Lapis roughly widening the size of their lake for the three of them to swim in for the sunny afternoon before wedging the mud back into place; there was Steven playing fetch with Pumpkin and Lion, though mostly Pumpkin, for hours. There was so much Lapis can barely contain it, frothing at the back of her throat, and it takes all her strength to swallow it back instead of heaving it up all over herself.
There’s just so much. It rushes to her head, presses the base of where her skull would be if she were human, and her hands instinctively dart up to wrap protectively around her neck. If she can hold her head up through the crashing waves, then maybe it’s worth something. If she can smother it, let it out where Peridot and Steven and Pumpkin can’t see, then maybe it was all worth something.
Peace. Then maybe it was all worth the peace.
She notices Garnet turning to look at her with Pumpkin scooped placatingly in the crook of her arm. An uncomfortable sort of feeling crawls up the backs of her arms. It can’t be good. She never expects anything positive to come out of Garnet’s mouth when she directs all of her attention onto Lapis like this—she’s used to bad news, bad situations, knowing damn well she was the only Gem who suffered these kinds of fates the way she did. She’s waiting for a dreadful premonition to spill out into the awkwardness permeating between them; something truly awful, like the car blowing up while Peridot’s driving or Pumpkin running into the road and turning into gourd pulp.
“Relax,” is what Garnet says instead, just as Peridot presses her nose into the screen to overzealously yell something at Steven, “you will find what you are looking for on this road trip.”
The hands around Lapis’ neck grow lax in surprise. Garnet gives her her best attempt at a reassuring smile, which has gotten pretty good these past few years, before she lifts the laptop out of Peridot’s reach lest the smaller Gem crush it against her forehead in her excitement. She puts Pumpkin back down onto the ground, and she immediately jumps to brutally maul Peridot. Peridot catches her before her vicious teeth sink into her cute face and simply holds her to her chest as the lively pumpkin starts to fervently lick at her chin instead.
“I came to tell you that, from what my vision has provided me, there will be no terrible car crashes.” Garnet presents the Steven-laptop, in which Steven grins cheerfully at them. “And Steven has something to say.”
“I’m super excited to see you four,” he laughs, “especially you, Pumpkin!” She barks in reply. “Don’t worry about how long it might take to get here. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Or, that’s what my dad said, anyway.”
“Well, we are just as excited to see you too, Steven! Aren’t we, Lapis?” Peridot elbows her.
Lapis smiles contentedly. “Yeah. I’m always happy to see you, Steven.”
Wait.
She pauses, smile frozen on her face. “Did you say ‘four’?”
Peridot, lovely, lovely Peridot, glances up at her in an uncharacteristically nervous manner. “Oh! That! Haha. Um. Well. I wanted to break the news to you sooner…”
Lapis whirls her head around to give Peridot a cold glare, and the shorter Gem squeaks.
“W-Well!” She sputters, sweat already beading from her gem. “I- There is just one more addition to our road trip that I… may have neglected to mention to you earlier, a week ago…”
“Peridot.” Lapis grits out.
“Th-That is to say!” Distantly, Lapis thinks that she enjoys this side of Peridot too, squirmy and afraid. She’s perseverating fiercely at this point. “Um… our friend, Jasper, will be joining us.”
The entire world halts.
What.
What.
What.
As if on cue, Pumpkin leaps out of Peridot’s arms, and Lapis watches in abject horror as she sprints off in a mad dash towards—
—Jasper. Hulking towards them, leaning down just in time to catch Pumpkin in her arms. She immediately begins to slobber all over her in what must be a righteous attempt to murder her in cold blood before Jasper has the gall to reach Lapis and let her do the honors.
Jasper glances up to meet Lapis’ eyes, which are no doubt drowning in fury, and the only thing she offers is a small, emotionless nod.
What. “The. Fuck.”
Peridot makes an obnoxious, cheaping laugh, and Lapis swiftly returns her glare onto her again. She startles, sweat pouring down the sides of her face profusely.
“Surprise…?” She wrings her hands anxiously.
Lapis stares.
And stares.
And stares, for only a second longer, before she pivots sharply on her heel and stalks away.
“Lapis! Wait!”
She doesn’t wait. She stomps away faster, fists clenched tightly, with her jaw set so hard it feels like her teeth could shatter. Her nails dig dull pains into her palms, her hands shake. The audacity. The audacity. Don’t they know how easily she could shatter them all? How easily she could shatter Jasper? She used to push, push and push and push until Jasper teetered on the edge of becoming nothing, and the threat only made it all the more thrilling. How far could she throw Jasper out before a crack appeared on her gem? How many times could she stretch her so thin she was screaming, fingers spasming to wrap around her neck and squeeze, but ultimately useless against Lapis’ restraints?
Lapis grinds her teeth together. Jasper was durable. Aren’t Peridots as well?
Could she take more?
Her body freezes, sudden, with a jolt.
Something like repulsion seizes at her limbs, locks her shoulders up to her ears, unnecessary breaths coming in ragged. She chokes, feet coming to a standstill as she staggers from the weight of her own disgust trying to asphyxiate her—she told herself she can’t think like that. She told herself. She gags, crumpling over, a hand darting up to her mouth. She’s going to spew, unjustly, everything that had kept her from joining the Crystal Gems all those years ago. All those little things that bristle like a branding iron, sizzling, at her nape, because she’s the exact same violent and mindless monster she was when she first formed over fifteen thousand years ago. She’s the same terraformer, the same blind servant, the same Gem that kept Jasper entangled within her just for her own sick satisfaction. She’s the same harbinger of misfortune she has always been, what the other Lapis Lazulis from fifteen thousand years ago would call her teasingly when she came back from missions with her dress frumpled and a pout drowning her face. She knew, deep down, fifteen thousand years ago. Even if she never outright failed, something horrible always happened. And she carries that with her everywhere, suffocating, and it’s going to shatter Peridot one day.
“Lapis,” she hears Peridot say, voice syrupy with concern, and Lapis doubles over with a muffled retching noise. “Stars- I’m so sorry, Lapis. I should’ve told you beforehand. I shouldn’t have been too nervous about it, too.”
She feels a tenderhearted hand rest against her shoulder. She shouldn’t touch her, she wants to say. One wrong thought, and Lapis will grab her wrist and rip her hand off her arm. One wrong thought, and she’ll crush Peridot under the weight of all her misfortune. That’s what this always comes down to.
“Lapis,” Peridot says gently, so gently, always so gentle, “we can kick Jasper out. Just the two of us is what you wanted, right? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been presumptuous. It’s just…”
As soon as her throat stops convulsing with the false need to vomit, Lapis violently ensnares Peridot by the shoulders, yanks her down onto her knees, and buries herself in the crook of the other Gem’s neck. Peridot only makes a soft noise of surprise before she wraps her arms around Lapis’ torso. Without missing a beat, twining her arms beneath Lapis’ in such a reverent manner it makes her want to claw her nails into Peridot’s back and tear her apart to find what exactly makes her. But she doesn’t, and instead shutters out half-lucid breaths against her.
“Steven suggested it,” Peridot murmurs against Lapis’ scalp. Lapis wants to crawl inside of her skin and rot there. “I’ve only recently started to acquaint myself with Jasper. He said it seemed like she missed him, so he thought it would be three birds with one stone if we brought her along too.” Feeling Peridot’s lips move against her like this is almost sinful. Careful love, careful touch. “Or, four, if you count Pumpkin.”
“Always count Pumpkin,” Lapis mumbles hoarsely.
She feels Peridot shake with a small laugh against her. “Of course. Do you want to uninvite Jasper?”
Peridot is always warm. The just-right kind of warm, not like the cool of the ocean. “I want,” her voice sounds scratchy, weak, “you, forever.”
“You already have that.”
Thump-thump-thump. A rabbit. “Together. We can melt. Into one.”
Peridot hums thoughtfully. “Like fusion? Mm… we could, but then how would we take turns driving?”
Lapis turns her head slightly, softens her breath against her neck. An inquiry.
“Well, we’ll probably get sick of driving after a while,” Peridot answers smoothly. “It’s a road trip across the country. If we don’t fuse, we can take turns driving. That way, it won’t become a chore.”
She moves, again, noses along the soft line where Peridot’s afro ends, has to consciously let up the pads of her fingers against Peridot’s shoulderblades where they had been pressing as if she wanted to see just how far she could meld her fingertips into the other’s skin. And then she sighs, a flaccid and whistling sort of noise, before she reluctantly peels herself off of the green Gem to look her in the face.
She must’ve taken her glasses off at some point so she wouldn’t poke Lapis. When their eyes meet, Peridot smiles.
When she feels Peridot’s hands slip down to hold the vulnerable of her waist above her pants, when she tentatively brings her quivering hands up to cup her face in waiting for Peridot to lean in first, she remembers Camp Pining Hearts. That’s where this came from, after all. Peridot is a curious soul, curiouser still about the inner workings of humanity in ways that Lapis has never quite bothered to indulge in, and it eventually led to this. They had watched enough scenes of two characters touching lips for Peridot to finally pace their room, wondering aloud about it, as Lapis made disengaged noises of acknowledgement every few minutes. Human fusion? Peridot had asked. Friendship bonding ritual? Human courting? Tool of comfort? Hobby for fun? Lapis only shrugged in response.
Tool of comfort was what she settled on. The characters tended to grow closer after ‘kissing’, as Steven bashfully informed them was the name of this activity, and they were momentarily placated in their issues before new situations arose. And, stars, did Lapis need the comforting. Peridot would never say it out loud, but she was always vying for new and better ways to help Lapis with her constant, raging emotional turmoil.
Which is nice. It’s nice. Peridot is nice.
Correction: Peridot is kind. She does nice things, and she is kind. She is also warm, also, still so warm, tender as she moves a long, balming kiss against Lapis’ lips. It’s near searing, burns and knocks sharply up against the slouch of her back, breaths caught in a tangle even though she knows she doesn’t need them. Lapis takes care not to push too much, to only let Peridot press closer. She can’t risk this. She’s never really been able to. There’s one more, a soft peck right after briefly letting up, before Peridot fully pulls away.
She tilts her head, and it’s reminiscent of Pumpkin when she encounters something she thinks she should already understand. She brings Lapis’ hands with her as she does this. “Are you feeling better?”
Blunt as always. Lapis smiles, earnest but difficult to wrench upwards any further. “I already did before you kissed me.”
She watches Peridot grin, brighter than any Sun, as her thumbs thoughtlessly caress short, tingling paths along Lapis’ skin. “Good! The road trip is your decision, Lapis.” Her hands leave to hold Lapis’ arms, and she takes the sign to let Peridot help her up off the sand, her own hands dropping from her face limply. “I’ll give you a minute to think.” She turns, makes a move to walk away.
Lapis suddenly clutches at Peridot’s arms with a tight-knit frown. “Don’t.” Don’t leave. Not yet, anyway.
“Okay,” she says, very simply, “then I won’t.”
It’s funny how easy Peridot makes this seem. Lapis bends down to pick Peridot’s glasses up off the ground and holds them out to her, all the while keeping her grip on her arm steady. As Peridot takes them, Lapis ruminates.
It’s true that Jasper has changed. She knew that five years ago, when she spied on Jasper bidding Steven farewell before he left, and she knows that now. She has heard, vaguely, about how Pumpkin is fond of Jasper through Peridot. She has heard about Jasper slowly becoming friends with the Crystal Gems, perhaps even more so than Lapis herself did, has heard about her pottery and her fully bloomed friendships with Pearl and Amethyst and budding friendship with Peridot and—she knows. She knows. That’s not the issue.
What do they know about Jasper? That's the better question. What do they know about the ocean, their violence, their desperation? Can they really look her in the eyes and not see Malachite? Can they really sit beside her, brush elbows, break bread, and not want to rip her apart from the sockets?
Maybe Lapis is being unfair. Maybe she’s a bad person for how helpless she feels to the irritation bubbling up inside of her every time she catches a glimpse of Jasper in Little Homeworld. Maybe scampering around trying to avoid Jasper for seven straight years isn’t really helping. Maybe she just has to hide it, like everything else, and keep her fists to herself.
She does hate Jasper, truly, but she doesn’t dislike her. Maybe that’s her fatal flaw.
Maybe she’s, in a roundabout way, just weak to her.
Different from her weakness to Peridot, different from her weakness to Steven. A different sort of weakness.
Lapis frowns sourly down at her own feet.
“It’s fine,” she manages to muster. “Jasper can come.”
“Really?” Peridot doesn’t do a good job at hiding the excitement in her voice. Despite it all, Lapis can’t help but let a fondness bloom in her chest at the sound. “You, uh, don’t have to force yourself to get along with her. She… hurt you, of course…”
She needed that hurt when it happened. She doesn’t say that out loud, though, because then Peridot will get that specific crease between her eyebrows. And then there will be concern marring her cute features, she’ll try to lovingly pry about it, and Lapis can’t face that right now. She might run. She might punch her. She might do both.
“I hurt her too,” is all she utters in response. “And I…” she tacks on lamely, “I have to start tolerating her eventually.”
“Well, hallelujah!” When Lapis gives Peridot a funny look at that, the other Gem adds secretively, “I learned that from a television show that wasn’t Camp Pining Hearts! I have to say, I did not care for it. Regardless, hallelujah!” Peridot props her glasses back onto her face and then takes hold of Lapis’ arms again, shaking them up and down in a light, cheerful manner. “Let’s set off, then! It’ll be good and fun.”
Good and fun. This will be a good and fun road trip. Lapis steels herself as Peridot leads her back to the sedan and gathering of four, as jolly as ever. She’ll be jolly about this too. Good and fun.
This is bad and awful. Straight up. Lapis tries to pretend she isn’t glowering in the passenger seat, curled up in an angry ball, as Peridot loudly frets at the GPS’ automated voice blasting the wrong directions at full volume from her phone. Jasper, in the backseat, is wrestling just a touch too roughly with Pumpkin for her liking. Pumpkin currently has her jaws locked around Jasper’s wrist, which she’s totally fine with as long as Pumpkin is biting hard enough to leave painful marks, and Jasper is playfully jostling her arm back and forth, which she is less fine with. Pumpkin is a squishy and soft thing. Jasper shouldn’t be so aggressive with her.
“Stop yelling at me!” Peridot yells back at her phone, just as Pumpkin starts up another long, happy growl from the back.
Lapis tries, again, to stick her fingers into her ears. It, again, doesn’t help. The sedan makes a horrible screeching noise, as if it can’t handle the cacophony occurring inside of it, and the noise very helpfully rips right through her fingers and into her eardrums. She grimaces, mostly to herself, and curls up even further.
“Just turn it off,” Jasper bellows.
Lapis thinks of jutting her elbow into Jasper’s throat.
“Don’t you think I'm trying?!”
“Try harder!”
“Don’t you think I’m trying?!?!”
Lapis thinks of throwing the whole car into oncoming traffic, herself included.
This was a bad idea. She opens her mouth to voice such a thought but, just as she does, a screeching honk blares from behind them, and Peridot in the driver’s seat jumps a foot into the air, forcing the sedan to a sudden halt. Everything in the car goes flying forward, and Lapis’ forehead slams gracefully into the dashboard.
She blinks.
She doesn’t move. She stays there, throbbing forehead pressed against the cool plastic, and lets out a slow, wispy exhale. Somewhere beyond her, there’s raucous noises exploding like fireworks, Peridot’s voice growing shriller and Jasper’s echoing further, but she’s not with that right now. Imagine a beach. A beautiful, peaceful beach. Warm. Her toes in the sand. Calm tides, lingering seafoam. Steven said, imagine a beach when you’re stressed. So, goddamnit, she’s imagining one.
“Just pull over!”
Warm sand.
“There’s no rest stop!”
Lingering tides.
“You don’t need a rest stop to pull over, brickhead, just do it.”
Calm seafoam.
“Don’t call me brickhead! Stars, that’s rich coming from you! All you do all day is knock bricks together and- ugh, ugh! Fine, but if we get in trouble, we’re throwing you under the bus.”
Warm tides.
“‘We’? If you can get Lapis out of whatever trance she’s in, maybe she’ll agree. Huh. Think she’s bruising.”
Lingering seafoam. Calm sand. Lingering tides. Lingering sand. Lingering seafoam. Lingering waves, crashing, crashing, spraying seafoam like blood.
“Wha- Lapis? Oh no, your forehead—!”
“Keep your eyes on the damn road!”
“Stop barking in my ear!!”
Lapis lifts her head to find Peridot desperately white-knuckling the wheel and Jasper leaning her head down to let Pumpkin gnaw on the ends of her hair. They make eye contact, her and Jasper, and the only thing she allows herself is to let her expression visibly shrivel at her before turning back to Peridot.
“Want me to drive?” She offers flatly.
“Lapis,” Peridot says, and her voice sounds strained, like it’s coming out of a pasta roller, “please don’t scream at the other drivers.”
She smiles. “I won’t.”
Peridot shoots her a weak glare, irises flitting nervously like she couldn't possibly bear to give Lapis the stink eye for too long. “Don’t hit the other drivers.”
She grins. “I won’t.”
“Keep your road rage inhibited.”
“I always do.”
“You don’t.”
“I will. For you.” Lapis reaches her hand out to rest against Peridot’s wrist, and Peridot’s shoulders leap up in surprise before they relax in a downward slump, further than they've been sitting for the past two hours. She makes a miserable face at the road, clearly torn between draping herself across the armrest to melt into the comfort of Lapis’ ready embrace and driving the car to at least the next rest stop so she can slam her head forward into the steering wheel and knock herself out for a couple hundred years. “I’m serious,” Lapis says quietly, and Peridot’s eyes briefly dart over to her. “I’ll drive nicely this time.”
If she tries hard enough, she can half-successfully pretend she can’t feel Jasper’s gaze boring into her—more specifically, into her hand on Peridot’s wrist. She’s not too interested in Jasper’s take on what broils thick between her and Peridot. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what she thinks because if even a single thought flits across Jasper’s mind right now, Lapis will swivel around to slug a water-fist against her gem nose so hard it’ll birth splintering cracks across like veins. She doesn’t even bother to glance at Jasper.
Peridot lets out a tremendous sigh. It’s Earth-shaking, and Lapis finds herself smiling in amusement at the weary look on her face more suited to a withered old human than a Gem as young as herself.
“Fine. When we reach the next rest stop, we can switch. Nice driving. Do you promise me, Lapis?”
She doesn’t tell her that she still hasn’t gotten her driver’s license yet. She figures it’s not too important, resting back against the seat, as she stares at the way the clouds part just in time to dance in neon gleams off of Peridot’s gem. She ignores Jasper.
“Promise.”